This is medieval death trip for Monday, June 28, 2021.
Episode 88 concerning the plight of the paterfamilias.
Hello and welcome to medieval death trip, the show where we explore the wit and weirdness of medieval texts.
I'm your host, Patrick Lane, and I'd like to start off today with a slightly belated bit of non medieval history for much of the world.
We celebrated Father's Day last weekend when I had hoped to be ready with this episode.
Around 90 countries celebrate it on the third Sunday of June, following american precedent.
The holiday was originally proposed by washingtonian Sonora Smart Dodd in 1909 in the wake of the popularity of Mother's Day, which had had its first official celebration in 1907, though it wasn't recognized as a national holiday by the us government until 1914.
In fact, when a resolution recognizing Mother's Day was first brought before the US Senate in 1908, it was literally laughed out of consideration with a mother in law joke.
Heres an account of what happened as described in an article by Kathleen W.
Jones from 1980, published in the journal Texas Studies in Literature and language, and you can go to our website, medieval deathtrip.com for full bibliographic information.
Jones writes, the original unwillingness of womens groups to sponsor a day honoring mothers was paralleled by actions in the United States Congress, where, on the Saturday morning before Mother's Day, 1908, the Senate engaged in a 40 minutes Mother's Day debate.
Freshman Senator Elmer Burkitt from Nebraska introduced the resolution that Sunday, May 10, 1908, be recognized as Mother's Day, end quote, and urged Senate members and employees to wear a white flower in honor of the occasion.
Having consulted with some older in service as to the propriety of the resolution, Burkitt was quite unprepared for the derisive comments it elicited, Republican Senator John Kean from New Jersey moved to strike out all the words after resolved and substitute the fifth commandment.
Other senators described the resolution as unnecessary and belittling to the sentiment of motherhood, end quote.
Facetiously decrying the invidious distinction made by a day for mothers, one senator suggested a fathers daya day for cousins, aunts, and uncles.
But mention of a mother in law Day drew the greatest laughter from the assembly.
The opposition piously agreed that above all others, they revered the holy name of mother, but the sentiment was simply not a proper subject for legislation.
To defend his resolution, Senator Burkitt vainly appealed to rural fears that urbanization threatened the moral fiber of the nation, the midwesterner.
After reminding the Senate that farm boys who left home to take advantage of the opportunities in the city, were instead corrupted by its evil ways, contended that Mothers Day would get the boys together and make them think of home and mother and the surroundings there, and as well for the excerpt from Jones article.
So that last bit there just serves to remind us that over a hundred years on and the lines in the so called culture wars are still drawn at some of the same points.