Living the Seasons: Simple Ways to Celebrate the Beauty of Your Faith Throughout the Year

Review

Living the Seasons by Erica Tighe Campbell Ave Maria Press | 2023 | 240 pp. The Church Calendar as a Way of Life There is a quiet revolution available to Catholic families — not one requiring theological formation or specialized knowledge, but one measured in pretzels shaped like praying arms, in paper crown crafts for Christ the King, in the smell of bread baking on Corpus Christi. Living the Seasons: Simple Ways to Celebrate the Beauty of Your Faith Throughout the Year by Erica Tighe Campbell proposes that the liturgical calendar, far from being a structure reserved for church buildings and ordained ministers, is an invitation into a kind of domestic sanctity — one celebrated with glue guns, feast day meals, and candles. Campbell, founder of the Be a Heart design brand and a practicing Catholic mother, has organized the book along the arc of the Church year: Advent, Christmas, Ordinary Time I, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, and Ordinary Time II. Each section moves through the major feasts and seasons with a blend of brief theological reflection, suggested activities, craft projects, and prayer. The design is generous — full-color photographs, spacious layouts, and QR codes linking to free downloadable templates that make implementation accessible rather than aspirational. What gives the book its theological grounding is Campbell's consistent insistence that Christianity is not a self-improvement program but a communion. She opens the Ordinary Time II section with a quote from St. Teresa of Avila and a line from Pope Benedict XVI that functions as the book's quiet thesis: faith, rightly lived, draws us out of ourselves and into relationship — with God, with the Church, and with one another. The feast days and crafts are not decorative supplements to real religious life; they are religious life, rendered visible and tangible in the domestic sphere. The activities vary in complexity. Trinity Sunday, for example, might be observed with a batch of traditional pretzels (their shape evoking a figure in prayer), a simple Trinity wall hanging, or a discussion of how music — melody, harmony, rhythm — offers a sensory analogy for the three Persons. Corpus Christi invites families toward Eucharistic adoration, bread-making, or processing through the house with ribbon dancers. None of this demands a theology degree. Much of it can be done by children. All of it anchors abstract belief in physical, communal acts. The Remarkably & Wonderfully Made blog has highlighted what may be the book's most underappreciated quality: its adaptability. The range of activities — from singing a simple prayer (accessible to any age or ability) to more involved multi-step crafts — makes the book genuinely usable across different family configurations, including those with children who have disabilities or developmental differences. The free templates further reduce the barrier to entry. Campbell is not presenting a system. She is presenting a sensibility: that the Church's calendar, internalized and practiced at home, shapes a family's imagination in ways that catechism classes alone cannot. Living the Seasons won the 2025 CMA Book Award for Lifestyle Books (First Place), a recognition that reflects both its production quality and the genuine need it addresses. For families looking to move beyond intellectual assent and toward a lived faith that fills a house with light and bread and song, this book is a practical and beautiful starting point.

✓ Strengths

• ✓Grounds spiritual growth in the concrete rhythms of the liturgical year, giving readers a structured, repeatable practice rather than abstract aspiration.
• ✓Treats time itself as a vehicle of grace — the seasons are not decorative metaphor but an ordered framework through which God draws persons toward conversion.
• ✓Affirms the body-soul unity by anchoring interior transformation in the physical cycle of creation: Advent darkness, Lenten austerity, Easter light.
• ✓Encourages the virtue of memory (prudence-memory) by returning annually to the same feasts and fasts, building cumulative wisdom across the years rather than episodic spiritual effort.
• ✓Theologically grounded — rooted in communion, not self-help spirituality
• ✓Accessible to families with children of varying ages and abilities
• ✓Free downloadable templates via QR code reduce cost and preparation time
• ✓Gorgeous design makes it a durable household reference, not a paperback to discard

⚠ Considerations

• ⚠Some crafts require materials and prep time that not all families can sustain consistently
• ⚠The book's approach is more inspirational than instructional — families seeking doctrinal depth alongside activities will need supplementary resources
• ⚠Leans toward a particular aesthetic (artisanal, design-forward) that may not resonate with all households