Worship

The Meaning of Children's Sunday

Rev. David Hicks MacPherson
Waynesboro, VA

Every child needs to be welcomed and guided into adulthood with loving kindness by caring parents and teachers. Our Unitarian Universalist communities celebrate the milestones along this passage with Child Dedication, Children's Sunday, Coming-of-Age ceremonies. Thanks to Reverend Hicks MacPherson for sharing the meaning of Children's Sunday through the lives of three very special people. Do you have a Children's Day Celebration in your congregation?

The first special person is Charles Leonard, who was born in New Hampshire in 1822 and died in Medford, Massachusetts in 1918. In between those ninety-six years he was a minister and then Dean of our School for the Ministry at Tufts University. But let's back up a bit. After graduating from public school he became a teacher and read theology with a leading Universalist minister of that day, Thomas J. Sawyer. The school of which he later became Dean and other schools for Universalist ministers were not established until the 1850s.

On becoming a minister, Dr. Leonard accepted a call to the church in Chelsea, Massachusetts (part of Metro-Boston), where he remained for twenty-five years. During those years a conviction grew within him that the children were not sufficiently recognized by the church, nor was the loving guidance which was the church's responsibility to them properly celebrated. Therefore in 1858, he set aside a Sunday for recognition, which became known as Children's Day.

On that day families sat together, and at a point near the close of the service children were brought forward by their parents to participate in what was then called a ceremony of Baptism and Dedication. This was followed by a short prayer and congregational hymn. After the service there was an informal reception for the families. Dr. Leonard called it "…a soul-feast after the manner of the early church." (Universalist Leader, June 9, 1900)

In 1862 the second Sunday in June was selected as the day for regular celebration. By 1867 the concept had spread so that the Universalist General Convention, meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, adopted it and commended it to all Universalist societies. In 1868 the Methodists recommended it to their churches, also for the second Sunday in June. In 1883 the northern Presbyterians did the same. And in the decades that followed, other denominations adopted the custom. It may be the only holiday founded by religious liberals that has gained some measure of public acceptance.

Over the years elements in the service have been added, changed, or dropped. For example, while we no longer baptize our children, we do welcome them into the guardian fellowship of our churches. The parents, sponsors (if there be such), and congregation each in turn welcome the children and promise to so raise these children that they will be a credit to themselves and to the world. In our church we say:

As members of this congregation it is our task to strengthen each other in every high resolve. This must apply to the infant, the child, and the youth as well as the adult. Therefore, we will do our best to make of this meeting house a home wherein these children may learn that love, patience, honesty, courage, beauty, joy, and service to humanity are real values, shared and sought after by real people. And that our hearts will always be open to these persons in their failures as well as their triumphs. This do we covenant with them and their parents. (dhm 12-26-68)

Many churches often closed their Children's Day service by giving each child a flower to take home (often a geranium). For the growing number of urban children this plant was a means of bringing the beauty of nature and the care of natural things closer to them. And this giving of flowers will serve to introduce the second and third characters of our story.

They were Maja and Norbert Capek. Both were born in what later became the Republic of Czechoslovakia, he in 1870, and she in 1888. He trained for the Baptist ministry in Germany and was ordained in 1895. She studied in Bohemia and in this country and was ordained to the Unitarian ministry in 1926. Norbert Capek was not happy in the Baptist church because his theological inquiries led him to disagree with some of its tenets. In 1910 he met with Thomas G. Massaryk, who in 1919 became the first president of Czechoslovakia, and engaged him in a theological discussion. At the end of it Dr. Massaryk told Norbert that he was a Unitarian without knowing it. Whereupon Dr. Capek set off to meet Unitarians and study their religion. He came to America in 1911 and again in 1914. He stayed in the United States during the first world war and worked for U.S. Army Intelligence. In 1921, after much reflection, he and Maja returned in Czechoslovakia to start a Unitarian movement.

Throughout the 1920's and 1930's they helped found seven churches, which still exist. They wrote poetry, pamphlets, and special services for their members, most of whom had recently left the Roman Catholic Church. One of these ceremonies was called Flower Communion, and was first instituted in Prague on June 4, 1923. Maja said it was from the beginning intended as "a festival of brotherhood."

"No two flowers are alike, no two people are alike; yet each has a contribution to make; each would help to make this world as beautiful as a colorful bouquet . . . By exchanging the flowers, we signify that we are willing, in the spirit of tolerance and patience, to march together in search of truth, disregarding all that usually divides people." (UU World, March 1, 1976, page 3)

As the ceremony now occurs in many of our societies, flowers are brought, put in baskets, and arranged by a group of children. Then with a joyous song the baskets are carried into the front of the church in the Flower Processional. Words of dedication are spoken. The flowers are placed as a focal point for the service. At the end of the service each person is given a flower as they form a circle around the meeting room. When all have flowers, we sing another song and ask the people to take their flower and give it to someone who has a special meaning for them. There are many variations on this.

Coming back to Capeks, in 1939 Maja came back to this country for a speaking engagement. The Germans invaded Czechoslovakia. Norbert was first questioned by the Nazis and then on May 27, 1941, he was arrested by the Gestapo. No word was heard until after the second world war, when it was learned that he had been taken to Dachau Concentration Camp. While there he wrote poetry, preached, and consoled his fellow prisoners. Finally, in October of 1942, he was murdered by medical experimentation. Dr. Eliot, then president of the American Unitarian Association, upon learning of Dr. Capek's death, wrote: "Another name is added to the list of heroic Unitarian Martyrs, by whose death our freedom has been bought. Ours is now the responsibility to see to it that we stand fast in liberty so gloriously won." (UU World, December 15, 1970, page 6)

Maja lived on in the United States; since Czechoslovakia had been taken over by the Communists in 1948, she would not have been welcome there. She first celebrated Flower Communion in this country at our church in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1940 and lived to see the ceremony firmly established as a Unitarian Universalist festival by the time she died in 1966.

We have spoken of the three people who brought us the central elements in our Children's Day. Actually, of course, there were many, many more people involved. All the parents, the children, the teachers, the Directors of Religious Education, and the ministers who have given of themselves, these past years, to make our common faith come alive have had a part in forming our Children's Day. And every time we welcome someone into our lives or give from the flowering of our hope and love to make human life freer and stronger, we carry Children's Day into tomorrow.