Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the children of Israel, saying: ‘The fifteenth day of this seventh month shall be the Feast of Tabernacles for seven days to the Lord... ‘Also on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the fruit of the land, you shall keep the feast of the Lord for seven days; on the first day there shall be a sabbath-rest, and on the eighth day a sabbath-rest. And you shall take for yourselves on the first day the fruit of beautiful trees, branches of palm trees, the boughs of leafy trees, and willows of the brook; and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God for seven days. You shall keep it as a feast to the Lord for seven days in the year. It shall be a statute forever in your generations. You shall celebrate it in the seventh month. You shall dwell in booths for seven days. All who are native Israelites shall dwell in booths, that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God." - Leviticus 23:33-34 & 39-43 ![]()
My favorite holiday in America is Thanksgiving. People reflect on good things, they eat, they're happy, they eat, they actually seem grateful for once, they eat, the family gets together and remembers good times, they eat.... and there is food. Loads and loads of wonderful food.
Thanksgiving is basically the American version of Feast of Tabernacles. So you might be able to guess which Feast of the LORD is my favorite now. Maybe William Bradford and the pilgrims got the idea of Thanksgiving from Feast of Tabernacles? Oh my gosh. You might have been celebrating a Jewish based feast since childhood and never knew it! (BTW, in case you missed them, you can read about Feast of Trumpets here, and Day of Atonement here.) Making Booths
Feast of Tabernacles is honestly one of the funnest feasts to celebrate! You basically camp out in a home-made tent for a week, harvest some Fall produce, and eat, and rejoice, and eat again.
Now, my family has always adored the idea of building a sukkah, or "booth"... aka HOME MADE TENT... to celebrate Tabernacles. But... well.... the state of Oklahoma takes our efforts to build a sukkah as a personal challenge and does its double best to find every weakness in our cute little "booth". Seriously. If it can't blow our home made tent into Kansas or Texas, then it rains bucket loads onto it (which, we never complain about the rain, but, seriously Oklahoma?) Thank goodness God isn't legalistic about all this stuff. Honestly, I sometimes wonder if He doesn't get tickled by our tiny efforts against the "forces of nature"... A "tabernacle" is traditionally made out of stuff that grows out of the ground... so there is a broad spectrum of materials to choose from. It is meant to be a quick-throw-together kind of project, so you don't put a lot of effort into it, but you make sure it is sturdy enough to last 8 days and keep you out of the weather, basically. I've seen some folk build very basic booths out of corn-stalks and tree branches. Others get really fancy and do a nice bamboo roof and use clothe and tapestries for the walls, and even put rugs on the floor. Some take the smart route and just use trellis and, like, staple it all together around their picnic table (thumbs up). As a fun project, I asked the kids to help me make a video of our doggies building themselves booths and staying in them to "celebrate" Feast of Tabernacles. Well.... the dogs didn't actually build their booths. They wouldn't cooperate. So the kids and I built them, then the dogs reaped the benefits of our hard work by sitting in them for a few seconds while I videoed it and made them look cute and awesome. The kids thought it would be fun if we took the "Three Little Pigs" approach with the video, so that's what we did (even though bricks aren't technically the proper material to build a sukkah with). This was a lot of fun to make, so I hope you enjoy the video! (For those people who get email subscriptions that, for some dumb reason, don't show the YouTube videos - Click To Watch On YouTube): |
Kathryn FoglemanAuthor of the fantasy series, Tales of the Wovlen, Kathryn spends a great deal of time in the world of her imagination, having tea with fire breathing dragons, writing books on flying space ships, and practicing her mad scientist laugh with gusto. However, on occasion,she returns to this world just to play with her dog and blog about her fun. My BookGrab a Button!![]() Archives
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