‘Steal a Lemon, Find a Spouse’ anchors a St. Joseph’s Day tradition that blends humor, hope and a bit of mystery.
St. Joseph’s Day has come and gone. The novenas are finished, the festive outfits retired and perhaps most tragically, the brief Lenten excuse to eat pastries without guilt has expired.
But Catholics aren’t meant to forget St. Joseph after one day. The Church dedicates the entire month of March to him, after all.
I’ve had a personal devotion to St. Joseph since reading Consecration to St. Joseph by Father Donald Calloway during my freshman year of college. Since then, I’ve confidently considered myself well-versed in the saint’s many traditions.
Especially the edible ones.
To commemorate the saint’s feast last week, I wrote an article on St. Joseph’s zeppole, or zeppole di San Giuseppe: those glorious custard-filled pastries that have long held a special place in both my Italian American heart and my Lenten survival plan.
So naturally, I thought I knew what to expect when I attended a St. Joseph’s Day event at the Catholic Information Center in Washington, D.C., where two Dominican friars, Father Gregory Pine and Father Patrick Mary Briscoe, were recording a live episode of the Godsplaining podcast.
There were zeppole (something of a surprise, as the dessert is less common in our nation’s capital than Italian hubs like New York or Boston). There was a beautifully arranged St. Joseph’s Table, which had been blessed by Father Pine. And there were lemons: bowls and plates full of lemons. Plus, a sign: “Steal a lemon, get a spouse.”
I paused.
“Bowls of lemons,” the sign explained, “are commonly placed on traditional Italian-American altars to symbolize fidelity, luck, and hope. The tradition says that if you steal a lemon, you will find a husband (or wife).”
What was this? Was I so caught up in the craze of the zeppole that I somehow missed an even more peculiar tradition tied to St. Joseph and his solemnity?
Before we left the event that night, my friends and I did what any rational group of young Catholic women would do — we each took a lemon, laughed about it and carried them around alongside our books and pastries like slightly confused pilgrims of citrus-based destiny.
But when I got home and placed the lemon on my nightstand, the questions began.
Was this an actual tradition? Did it work? And perhaps most urgently: What am I supposed to do with the lemon now?
My previous research revealed that the St. Joseph’s Table (or St. Joseph’s Altar) dates to medieval Sicily, often including symbolic foods like bread, fava beans, zeppole and, yes, lemons, representing good fortune. But the “steal a lemon, get a spouse” add-on? That was more difficult to trace.
And yet, there are lots of references to it online. Parishioners from several churches in Louisiana told the Register in a March 2024 article that they had met their future spouses within months. Others credited the tradition with having children after placing their lemons in their bedroom and praying for St. Joseph’s intercession.
A 2024 CatholicMatch blog recounted a FOCUS missionary, Miriam, who took “a leap of faith” in stealing a lemon from the table, only to meet her future husband, named Joseph, six months later on a dating app.
At this point, I began eyeing the lemon on my nightstand with a bit more respect.
Still, I was stumped about what to do with my lemon. Keep it on my nightstand indefinitely? Refrigerate it for longevity (and, presumably, extended romantic prospects)? Use it in tea and hope that counts? Google wasn’t much help in offering options.
One friend suggested letting it go bad and then burying it, as one would a blessed object like a broken rosary or scapular. Another suggested we should have asked a priest before leaving the event (that would have been the logical move).
For now, the lemon remains where it began: on my nightstand, slightly softer than before, quietly existing as both a devotional curiosity and a potential life-altering citrus.
If nothing else, the tradition points to something deeper. St. Joseph’s life was marked by a radical openness to God’s will, even when it didn’t make sense. Whether or not a lemon leads to marriage, the real invitation is the same: to entrust our vocations, our timelines and our uncertainties to the will of the Father.
Though, for the record, my parents were married on St. Joseph’s Day. So I’m not ruling anything out.
And if this whole lemon thing doesn’t pan out, I’ve recently been informed by my mother that my grandmother always said receiving a teapot on the feast of the Immaculate Conception would also result in finding a husband within the year.
I haven’t verified that one yet — but give me until December!
