{"id":17174,"date":"2026-03-10T13:54:21","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T13:54:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/uncategorized\/she-celebrates-christmas-with-her-hens\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T06:03:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T06:03:07","slug":"she-celebrates-christmas-with-her-hens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/inspiring-stories\/she-celebrates-christmas-with-her-hens\/","title":{"rendered":"She Celebrates Christmas with Her Hens"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Which came first: the chicken or the egg? For me, there\u2019s no question. My chickens came first, and in many ways, they still do. You see, my \u201cgirls,\u201d as I call the hens, changed my life. And not only by giving me more eggs than I knew what to do with.<\/p>\n<p>Before they came along, I\u2019d worked on Wall Street and lived the big city life, a blur of five-star restaurants and cocktail parties, but it wasn\u2019t for me. I\u2019d grown up across the street from my grandparents\u2019 chicken farm in Massachusetts, and my parents had kept <a href=\"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/positive-living\/friends-and-family\/pets\/how-chickens-brought-her-closer-to-her-teenage-granddaughter\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a few chickens<\/a> in our own backyard.<\/p>\n<p>My great- and great-<em>great<\/em>-grandparents had been chicken keepers in Finland. So when my husband, Mark, and I decided to move to a farm in rural Maine and raise 12 hens of our own, I finally felt at home.<\/p>\n<p>Hens require a certain amount of sunlight to lay eggs, and some farms expose their hens to artificial light to keep them laying year-round. I prefer to do things naturally. That means I cook a lot of <a href=\"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/positive-living\/entertainment\/recipes\/appetizers\/yellow-squash-deviled-eggs\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">egg dishes<\/a> while the hens are laying at full capacity during the longer days of spring and summer.<\/p>\n<p>I preserve cartonfuls to use while the girls are on holiday\u2014because I need my <a href=\"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/positive-living\/health-and-wellness\/better-living\/makeover-eggnog\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Christmas eggnog<\/a>! I\u2019d love to tell you I use an old family recipe brought over from Finland, but the truth is, I used tips from magazines and TV chefs to create my own egg-cellent version.<\/p>\n<p>Other family traditions endure. When my grandparents emigrated to the United States, they continued to honor Saint Lucia\u2019s Day on December 13 as the start of <a href=\"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/positive-living\/simple-pleasures-of-the-christmas-season-0\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Christmas season<\/a>. Saint Lucia was said to have visited persecuted Christians hiding in the catacombs, lighting her way with a candlelit wreath on her head, her hands laden with provisions.<\/p>\n<p>Our family wove the Saint Lucia custom of girls in white dresses carrying candles and wreaths into our Christmas celebrations. As a girl, I sang in the choir at the candlelit Christmas Eve service at my grandmother\u2019s church. My favorite hymn was \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/positive-living\/entertainment\/rick-hamlin-sings-o-holy-night\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">O Holy Night<\/a>,\u201d when one star stood out among the others.<\/p>\n<p>That first Christmas in our new home, I decorated with the candles and wreaths of Saint Lucia. We strung garland inside and lights outside. The only house in sight had to say <a href=\"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/daily-devotions\/devotions-for-women\/holiday-devotions-devotions-for-women\/a-merry-christmas-devotion\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">merry Christmas<\/a>! I had an extra wreath and hung it on the chicken coop.<\/p>\n<p>Mark and I sat down to enjoy a <a href=\"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/positive-living\/entertainment\/spiced-eggnog\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">glass of eggnog<\/a> at the window, our handiwork complete. I looked out at the chicken coop and that one extra wreath. \u201cBut we can\u2019t see our Christmas lights from in here,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n<p>Problem solved when I strung the coop with twinkling lights. My girls clucked a little bit but didn\u2019t seem to mind my sprucing up the place. It seemed a shame not to have a tree in their run. So I cut down a sapling from the woods and decorated it with apples, a nutritious chicken treat.<\/p>\n<p>In Finland, it\u2019s tradition to feed <a href=\"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/positive-living\/how-birdwatching-can-benefit-our-health\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">wild birds<\/a> on Christmas morning. Families don\u2019t eat until the birds do. My chickens definitely benefit from my heritage. One year, I spent an entire afternoon stringing a long garland of popcorn, grapes, raisins and walnuts. I won\u2019t do that again: It took the girls exactly four seconds to peck the precious garland to the ground.<\/p>\n<p>Now I stick to hard-boiled eggs, radishes, cranberries and <a href=\"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/positive-living\/entertainment\/recipes\/dinner\/joy-of-cooking-sprouts\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Brussels sprouts<\/a>, which are much easier to string and last a lot longer to keep the hens entertained. For hardy tree decorations, I fill pine cones with peanut butter and roll them in sunflower seeds. Sometimes I make edible coconut oil ornaments with pops of color from fruits and veggies.<\/p>\n<p>My hardworking girls have as merry a Christmas as Mark and I do. A walk out to the coop on a snowy day is magical. Even better on a clear night. Mark was in the Navy and knows how to navigate by the stars. He points out the <a href=\"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/angels-and-miracles\/angels\/nasa-captures-some-angelic-constellations\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">constellations<\/a>. We talk about the wise men who let the heavens guide them to the straw-filled stable where Jesus was born that \u201cO Holy Night.\u201d I like to imagine that chickens were there too.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/positive-living\/entertainment\/spiced-eggnog\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Try Lisa&#8217;s recipe for Spiced Eggnog at home!<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Which came first: the chicken or the egg? For me, there\u2019s no question. My chickens came first, and in many ways, they still do. You see, my \u201cgirls,\u201d as I call the hens, changed my life. And not only by giving me more eggs than I knew what to do with. Before they came along, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":28757,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[172,135,191],"tags":[24,25,40,288,75],"ppma_author":[1550],"class_list":["post-17174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-friends-and-family","category-inspiring-stories","category-pets","tag-christmas","tag-family","tag-holidays","tag-joys-of-christmas","tag-pets"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.6 (Yoast SEO v27.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>She Celebrates Christmas with Her Hens - Guideposts Articles<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"She Celebrates Christmas with Her Hens\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Which came first: the chicken or the egg? For me, there\u2019s no question. My chickens came first, and in many ways, they still do. You see, my \u201cgirls,\u201d as I call the hens, changed my life. And not only by giving me more eggs than I knew what to do with. 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