Celebrate Christmas With St. Norbert College

Excitement for the season is tangible across campus. The decorations are up and students, faculty and staff members are gearing up for holiday events and Christmas celebrations. Come celebrate with us, or join in virtually from wherever you live.

Taste of the season
Plan an SNC menu! Here’s the Ruth’s Marketplace menu for tomorrow (Wednesday, Dec. 6), when the Caf serves up its much-anticipated annual Christmas dinner. Featured items include carved ham, chicken parmesan, an appetizer buffet and a dessert buffet around the Christmas tree.

Or, cook up a Christmas treat from an SNC Dining Services family recipe. In the home kitchen of Chef Dan Froelich, his family will honor a 25-year-old family tradition with the preparation of tourtière (pronounced toor-tyehr). And over at the home of Kathy Dunn, they’ll bake their favorite sugar-cookie recipe. 

Catch the holiday spirit
Get in the spirit of the season with Knights on Broadway, and catch a Christmas With the Knights performance or the Dudley Birder Chorale’s Holiday Pops Concert.

Shop ’til you drop
Find SNC Christmas gifts for everyone on your list. The college bookstore and Discoveries International are two great places to find the perfect present right here on campus – and both also offer online options.

Revel in the beauty of the season
Take a nostalgic minute to remember the campus as the first quiet snow falls on the college crèche. Our Facilities folks have once again set the nativity scene up in its usual place of honor – on the mall in front of Main Hall. It’s pinned to the Campus Beauty board at St. Norbert College on Pinterest, alongside gorgeous images taken here at every season. Enjoy hunting around – but we have a hunch that, at this time of the year, you’ll respond most to the shots of the college under snow. 

Remember the reason for the season
It’s not Christmas yet, and we remain liturgically mindful of the church year. Advent 2017 sees a new observation of the season in the shape of a banner looking out over De Pere from the overlook near the northwest gateway to campus (site of the new “The Conversion” sculpture). The banner bears a candle flame and the invocation “Light of the world, shine on us this Advent season.”

If you should be in town, plan to celebrate the true source of the joy of the season at Old St. Joe’s. Christmas Mass is offered at 4 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 24, and 10 a.m. Monday, Dec. 25.

And, wherever you are, give a thought to Christmas Day 1121. On that date, almost 900 years ago, Norbert of Xanten founded the religious community whose spirit enlivens the only college in the world to be founded by the order. It’s worth taking a minute to remember our founding saint and his small band at their first Christmas. We have this account, passed down from the 12th century in a manuscript now known as “Vita A: A Life of St. Norbert.”

Indeed many religious men, both bishops and abbots, had advised him in various ways, one suggesting the eremitic life, another that of an anchorite, still another to take up the lifestyle of the Cistercians. But Norbert, whose work and plans depended on heaven, entrusted his foundation neither to himself nor to others, but rather to him who is the beginning of all things. He pondered these many things in his heart, but he and those who wished to live with him had been dedicated since their youth, Norbert ordered that the rule be accepted which the Blessed Augustine had established for his followers. The apostolic life which he had undertaken by his preaching, he now hoped to live. He had heard that this way of life was ordained and renewed by this same blessed man after the apostles. By the profession of this rule then, on Christmas Day at Prémontré, one by one, they voluntarily enrolled themselves into that city of blessed eternity. 

 

A very merry Christmas and blessed holiday season to all our readers near and far, from all of us at St. Norbert College!

Dec. 5, 2017