Baking cookies is a labor of love for many of those devoted to St. Joseph. This time of year, volunteers spend hundreds of hours making Italian cookies for area St. Joseph altars built to honor the saint. It takes time and organization to produce the many cookies that visitors expect to taste and see when they visit an altar. The bakers gladly accept this task to praise St. Joseph for his many blessings.

Catholic churches, organizations, schools, families and individuals across the area will build altars dedicated to St. Joseph on his feast day, March 19. The altars were started in Sicily to commemorate the relief provided by St. Joseph during a famine. Sicilian immigrants brought the tradition to the United States in the early 1800s. Today, the tradition is carried forward to honor the saint and often, to thank him for special favors granted.