Prepare your children's heart for the holidays
Sheila Carroll
In the quote, Miss Mason meant something older and more sacred than a day off. Holidays for her meant holy-days—a pause in ordinary labor to remember and realign with what is good.
She saw these pauses as opportunities to deepen the most living kind of knowledge: sympathy, or right relationship, with life itself. The garden, the field, the woods, the creatures around us—these were her “texts” during times of rest.
In her understanding, to “teach sympathy” was to help children perceive the kinship of all creation: to watch ta bird, to see a dog's trust, to notice the change of trees this season. The art of noticing cultivates reverence and delight.
What is Sympathy for Life?
Miss Mason’s choice of the word sympathy is deliberate. It is not “study” or “use” of life, but sympathy for life and all its forms—a moral and spiritual disposition. True education, for her, began in love and respect for the created world. When a child learns to care for a living thing—a plant, a pet, a person—they are learning the habits of attention, gentleness, and stewardship that form the moral soil of their character.
Finding Our Way in 21st Century
She wrote in an age when industrial rhythms were displacing natural ones—when “holiday” was becoming amusement. Mason resisted that shift. She envisioned rest as recreation in the literal sense: re-creation. To go outdoors, to walk, to tend, to notice—these acts restored both body and soul because they harmonized with God’s design for the human person. We can do this, too.
She wrote in an age when industrial rhythms were displacing natural ones—when “holiday” was becoming amusement. Mason resisted that shift. She envisioned rest as recreation in the literal sense: re-creation. To go outdoors, to walk, to tend, to notice—these acts restored both body and soul because they harmonized with God’s design for the human person. We can do this, too.
The Deeper Lesson for Us
To spend our holidays teaching sympathy for life is to recover that original harmony. It is a gentle resistance against a world that prizes consumption over contemplation. When we spend our rest in acts of love—feeding birds, gathering evergreens, walking in the cold air with gratitude—we live the kind of education Mason called “a life.”
Simple Ways
- Read aloud a poem each day that points to beauty and hope. There are many in our Nature Poems. (Allow your children to choose and read the poem.)
- Step outside together, even for five minutes—notice one living thing still thriving and share it.
- Gather a few natural things to make a display that celebrates “sympathy for life with all its forms.” (Let your children tell visitors about it.)
- Make small offerings: scatter crumbs for birds, donate to a wildlife rescue, plant paperwhite bulbs to bloom mid-winter.
Our Once-a-Year Thanksgiving Sale
Bring more resources into your home and school that teach sympathy with all things—books, poems, and studies that nurture love for life in all its forms—our annual Thanksgiving Sale offers a timely opportunity.
From November 25 to December 1, all digital titles are 50% off and all print books 20% off. You’ll find beautifully crafted living books, nature guides, grade-level curricula and devotionals to offer helps for a living education.