Another “Day” has become yesterday. Without commemorating any “event,” save one of our own declarations, “Father’s Day” has happened again. In many ways, it is the Junior League “Day” to Mother’s Day of the previous month — in importance, chronology, and provenance. The first Father’s Day in America was celebrated at a Spokane, Washington, YMCA in 1910. But it wasn’t officially deemed a national holiday until 1974, by then President Richard Nixon, a full 58 years after Mother’s Day was given the same honor. In the U.K., Mothering Sunday had been celebrated for centuries before Father’s Day was finally added to the calendar in 1972.
Unlike the physical sacrifice of all mothers, fathers have a momentary connection with conception and can then cease to exist. But parenthood is not limited to biologic definition. Parenting is a universal need we all have, and thus a universal opportunity for the parent and child to fall short. When the movement to create a national Father’s Day began, the immediate reaction of many was derision. If fathers are to have a holiday, why not have holidays for cousins, grandparents, or pets too? Aren’t they also deserving of the honor of having their special day? Well, we now do.
In the rush to confer universal meaning to idiosyncratic happenstance, we invent “Days” for everything, including parenthood. Every day has been made into at least a “Day” each, 365 of them (and of course leap year day, too). I hate cooked fish but there are a bunch of “seafood-related ‘holidays’” I should celebrate. Every Friday was once a fish day for Catholics, until religion ceased to denominate public culture, and the Internet assumed the mantle.
So every human in America has now had this year’s “Father’s Day.” Whether we like it or not. Whether we are fathers or not. Whether we have known or have living fathers or not.
Or, for some of us, Father’s Day comes whether we want to celebrate our father or not.
Remembering is not celebration. I cannot forget my father. His mother died when he was one, during an illegal abortion of his sibling, unbeknownst to anyone, including his father. My father was then shipped to his maiden aunts in Canada for five years, until a new mother was found. He was the first of his family to graduate from high school. He graduated as the salutatorian of Boys High in Brooklyn in 1927. He went to Cornell University, and Cornell’s Law School, then to Wall Street, where for him there was no Great Depression to live through. He then lived through World War 2 on aircraft carriers in the Pacific.
Through all this brokenness, my father became a broken human. Though he was a professional success — the focal fatherly duty required of him — nearly every other aspect of his life was broken. And that brokenness became alcoholism. And that alcoholism defined my childhood home. My family became broken by it to the point of one’s suicide. We survivors are in that time’s wake, even 35 years after my father’s death.
Happy Father’s Day. Every. Year.
My children, however, want to celebrate me. Because I am not my father. If not merriment, commemoration of my parenting is made every year. As the one child my father had who had children, the irony of the subversion of my father’s legacy celebrated each Father’s Day by my sons is not lost on me. But even so, I have done nothing to deserve that celebration, besides living into the grace of God which passes all understanding.
My parents were as privileged as anyone, so I was too. But the cruelties of broken parents are not diminished by wealth, a full belly, or “good schools.” Neither for me, nor my father. But those cruelties do not render hopeless victims — they simply can expose God’s grace when survival follows damage.
So, for some of us, the “Days” do not mean much. But every day, the reality of all the days long gone, of the father long dead, is, for me, just a trigger of gratitude for what I, and you, have been given. None of us asked to be born. It is a gift. That gift is just the inclusion in the unfathomable grace of God and its overwhelming beauty — if we can see beyond the cruelties of our humanity, or our trivializing of it with our fabrications, like the “Days” we make for ourselves.
All the “Days” are just humans celebrating humans, making importance, money and meaning of our humanity. But we, the broken, are legion — and live in the reality that while we struggle to cope with life, it is God who saves us from ourselves, every day.
A sad commentary of an obviously selfish life.beinga a real father or dad can be a blessing. I myself being a father who will no longer hear the words or read the cards say “Happy Father’s Day ” from my deceased Son..
Sad shame ..
Why not just ” cancel” your father …
Some of us earn it..
The love never dies: despite all the brokenness, the connection is not cancellable…
The worst in us causes uncharted damage: but there is no choice for the damaged other than cope and hope God‘s love can overcome the worst in us…
We celebrate mothers to the point of sainthood. We never take into account the damage they do. My mother’s selfishness, addictions, and motivations of self gain has left a wake 49 years deep. I was only acknowledged once a month when my mother received that child support check and I’m supposed to elevate her to sainthood, her and all the other mothers who do the same dam thing. Hail hail the mothers of the broken.
“I sat with my anger long enough until she told me her real name was grief.”– author unknown
Actually no anger – even at the time, often fear, then, abiding, sadness.
The Peace of Christ be with you. It is. Scars can form early on in life. Nobody would ever choose to happen what happens were they to know it in advance. Memories can remain as fresh as they are sad. Again, peace. You are not alone. You know that, too.
Thank you…
Jesus said he did not come for the healthy, but the sick…it is hard for the well to accept what God offers…I’ve heard brokenness called “the sacred curse”…since brokenness seems to be a precursor to “eyes that see and ears that hear”…in it with you…it would be gross to tell the story of my father…so I’ll just leave it at that…Exodus 34:6-7…the sins of the fathers…how they do roll down the generations…
thank you – for some of us the vessel needs to be cracked to allow grace to enter
The damage is reciprocal to the vulnerability in love – the victimizer is simply cruel – for some (me) the enabler has a deeper, abiding pain and inscrutable indifference never abates: but God is there, too.
Born on Valentine’s Day, I understand Hallmark marketing holidays. Yet, my birthday always begins with giving my wife and our four daughters over-priced chocolates and earnest professions of my undying love. It never grows old, by the way.
You’re correct. St. Paul understood it well: “one person considers one day more sacred than another…” He reasons that we should be “convinced in our own minds” whether to celebrate it or not. I know Father’s Day is not a “sacred day”, but go with me for a moment: I don’t think the idea behind it is just “humans celebrating humans”, or at least, it doesn’t have to be.
Andy Root talks about the Immanent Frame and how modernity has from pilfered from us inter-generational thinking. On that score, we could tightly frame the failures of our fathers and our own failures and lament that neither they nor us are worthy of a special day. And you know, it’s true. Yet fatherhood itself is a sacred trust, much different than cousinhood or seafood, or [insert distant relation here]. No doubt many fathers, like yours and mine, blew it. I suppose I am saying the “Day” celebrates something greater than one generation’s poor ability to fill those shoes. In the meantime, if Father’s Day means donning Nike crew socks with Crocks, grilling for the family, and getting cheesy trophies, that is a sword I am ready to fall upon.
This all also calls to mind the word “timshel”, highlighted in Steinbeck’s East of Eden: “thou mayest” overcome the generational sin that is crouching at your door. See also Mumford & Sons https://open.spotify.com/track/5KYtnw4qIYaCxNRXVEOdSJ?si=ba3fe2c5772b4508.
From one beggar to another, I wish you the abiding peace from our heavenly Father, who nourishes and cheers the hearts of the saints, comforts the afflicted, and is deeply acquainted with all of our ways. Christ have mercy on us poor and powerless men who carry the light of Christ in our hearts.
With much care and respect, Jack
“From one beggar to another, I wish you the abiding peace from our heavenly Father, who nourishes and cheers the hearts of the saints, comforts the afflicted, and is deeply acquainted with all of our ways. Christ have mercy on us poor and powerless men who carry the light of Christ in our hearts.” your words are fraught with the clarity born of sensing the overwhelming inadequacy of our response to the grace we are immersed in, whether we like it or not: Perhaps the distinction for me is that the sacred given to us – fatherhood, sacrifice, devotion – simply effort beyond reason – faith – is made silly in our profanity: registering our values to inscrutable gifts is simply not possible: but every sacred place I help to create is as fully immersed in hope as the great thoughts you share: It is what I have been given: to try: in all things. Thank You