SUNDAY IN THE HOME
Almost every family finds Sunday a problem. Other days are well occupied
with full programs; this one has a program for only part of its time.
Other days are rich with the liberty of happy action, but this one is
frequently marked by inaction, repression, and limitations. As soon as
the evanescent pleasure of Sunday clothes has passed, for those for whom
it existed at all, the children settle down to endure the day.
§ 1. THE MEANING OF THE DAY
Fathers and mothers who vent a sigh of relief when Sunday is over must
marvel at the strains of "O day of joy and gladness." Yet this day
defeats its purpose when it is of any other character. We have no right
to rob it of its joy and its healing balm. On the day made for man,
sacred to his highest good, whatever hinders the real happiness of the
child ought to be set aside.
Instead of accepting traditions regarding the method of observing the
Sunday, would it not be worth while to ask ourselves, For what use of
the day can we properly be held responsible? Here are so many--fifty-two
a year--days of special opportunity. To us who complain that business
interferes with the personal education of our children through the week,
what ought this day to mean? To us who lament the little time we can
spend with our families, what ought this day to mean? And what ought we
to try to make it mean to children?
We call this God's day; what must some children think of a God who robs
his day of all pleasure? If this is the kind of day he makes, then how
unattractive would be his years and eternity! It is the day when we have
our best opportunity to show them what God is like, to interpret his
world and his works in terms of beauty, kindness, riches of thought, and
love.
It ought to be the day reserved for the best in life, for the treasures
of affection, for the uses of the spirit. Whatever is done this day must
come to this test, Is this a ministry to the life of goodness, truth,
and loving service? Does this enrich lives? In other words, we may put
the broad educational test to the day and its program and determine all
by ministry to growing lives.
§ 2. CONSERVING THE VALUES
The family faces the problem of the opposition between the rights of man
on this day and the greed of commerce, the fight between a day of rest
and a day of work. Man's right to rest is assured, legally, but
commerce in the name of amusement and in the guise of petty and
unnecessary trading constantly maintains its fight to invade the day of
rest, to turn it from ministry to man as a person to the dull level of
the week of ministry to things. The home has much at stake in this
struggle. It needs one day free from the life that tears its members
apart, free from the toil that engrosses thought, free for its members
to live together as spiritual beings.
In the need for one day, free from the things that hinder and devoted to
the life of the spirit, the home finds the guiding principle for the use
of the day; all members are to be trained to use it as a glorious
opportunity, a welcome period, a day of the best things of life. It is
devoted to personality, to man's rights as a religious being.
Surely one of the best things of life will be that we shall meet one
another, shall look into faces of friends and companions! And this
opportunity of social mingling is lifted to a high level when it is an
act of the larger family life, the life that brings God and man into one
family. That is what the church meeting and service ought to be: our
Father's larger family getting together on the day of the life that
makes them one. For the child the church school and the children's
service of worship are their immediate points of vital touch with the
church family. If we think of the day as affording us the pleasure of
social mingling with friends and members of that family, Sunday morning
will cease to be a period of unwilling observance of empty duties. Of
course that will depend, too, on the measure in which the church and
school grasp their opportunity to make this the best of days.[31]
Further, let the home keep this day as the one of personal values all
the way through, sacred to that life of love, friendship, and joy in the
presence of one another which is the essential life of the family. It
has always been a good custom for friends to visit on this day, for
families grown up and established around their own hearths to gather
again for a few hours. It is the day when we have time to discover how
much greater are the riches of friendship than aught besides, when,
looking into the eyes of those we love, we see "the light that never was
on sea or land," the ultimate good!
The hours of being together are the hours of real education. Children
cannot be with good and great people and remain the same. Their lives
need other lives. Above all, they need us. This should be the day for
real mothering and fathering. Nothing ought to be permitted to interfere
with this, neither our social pleasures nor the demands of the church.
§ 3. THE PROBLEM OF PLAY
What shall we do with the child who wants to play on Sunday? Is there
any other kind of child? They all want to. It is as natural for a child
to play as it is for a man to rest; it is as necessary. A child is a
growing person learning life by play. Because play seems trivial to us
we assume it is so to them; we would banish the trivial from the day
devoted to the higher life. In some families play is forbidden because
children find pleasure in it, and adults find it impossible to associate
piety and pleasure.
Shall we then throw down all barriers and make this day the same as all
others? No, rather make the day different by throwing down barriers that
stand on other days. Let this be the day when the barriers between
father and sons, parents and children, are let down and all can enter
into the joy of living.
Play is to a child the idealization of life's experiences and the
realization of its ideals. That is why he plays at school, idealizing
the everyday life; that is why he plays at housekeeping, at being in
church, at being a railway engineer, even a highwayman or an outlaw. The
traditional games are the game of life itself in terms of childhood.
Play as idealized experience and realized ideals is to the child what
the church, worship, and the reading of fiction and essays are to the
adult. Play is the child's method of reaching forward into life's
meaning. Some games as old as history carry a weight of human tradition
and experience as rich for a child as the adult obtains from historical
review and from association with the past. There is a sense in which the
child playing these games opens the Bible of the race.[32]
We cannot make children over into our pattern; we have to learn from
them. Indeed, we come to life through their ways. We must become as
little children. Before we settle the question of play on Sunday we do
well to be sure that we know what play means to children, that we really
grasp something of its educational value and its religious potency. Then
we can proceed to a family policy in Sunday play.
§ 4. A POLICY ON PLAY
_Keep the day as one of family unity._ Help the child to think of it as
a day protected for the sake of family togetherness. You can play that
for this day the ideal is already realized of a family life
uninterrupted by the demands of labor and business.
_Maintain the unity by doing the ideal things together._ Go to the place
of worship together, provided it is the place where the child can find
expression for spiritual ideals. If the Sunday school does not really
lift the child-life and really teach the child, if it is not honest with
him and makes no suitable provision for his developing nature, he will
be better off in a quiet hour of family conversation and reading at
home. That means the application of parents to this hour.[33] It
banishes the monstrous Sunday supplement with its hideous, debasing
pictures. It substitutes conversation in the whole group, reading aloud
of stories and poems, biblical and otherwise, and songs, hymns, or at
times the walk in the fields or parks. Fortunately the better type of
Sunday school is more and more to be found; children are more and more
receiving a ministry actually determined by their needs. So far as the
church service is concerned the ideal situation is found when a parallel
service is provided for children, based on their needs and capacities.
As to attendance, under other circumstances, in the family pew, that
depends on whether the child is gaining an aversion to the church by the
torture and tedium often involved. Without doubt many adults acquired
the settled habit of sleeping in church because that was the only
possible relief in childhood.[34]
_Maintain the family unity by stepping into the child's ideal life.
Expect activity and use it._ Why should we assume that because the adult
finds a Sunday nap enjoyable the child will be blessed by enforced
silence? I would rather see a father playing catch with his boys on
Sunday than see the boys cowed into silence while he slept a Sabbath
sleep. Children will play. Their play is innocent; more, it may be
helpful and educative; we can insure these values in it by our
participation. That is the parent's opportunity for a closer sympathy
with his children. Playing together is the closest living, thinking, and
feeling together. Where games are shared, confidences, secrets, and
aspirations are shared, too. Besides, the participation of the adult may
tend to tone up the game and to moderate boisterousness.
_Seek the beautiful._ Speaking as one who has been under both the
puritanical regulation and the so-called "continental" freedom of Sunday
observance, nothing seems much more beautiful than the sight of an
entire family playing at home, in the park, or off in the woods or the
fields of the country. Life is strengthened, ideals are lifted, family
ties knit closer, gratitude is quickened, and courage stimulated by play
of this kind.
§ 5. POINTS OF DIFFERENCE
But because it is evidently most important that this day should be
different from other days, it is well to mark that difference in our
plays and pleasures and to follow some simple principles for Sunday
play.
First, make it the day of the _best_ plays. The participation of parents
will tend to have this effect. Sometimes some forms of play may be
reserved for this day.
Secondly, our play should never interfere with the rights of those who
desire to be quiet or to observe the day in ways differing from ours. We
must respect the rights of all.
Thirdly, our play must not cause additional or unnecessary labor.
Fourthly, our play must not interfere with the pleasures of others. For
instance, in the city children who can use the public tennis courts
every day should keep off them on Sunday in order to give opportunity to
those who can use them only on that day.
Having said so much on play on Sundays, we must not leave the impression
that play is the principal thing. It would be the principal thing for
children compelled to work or confined in crowded tenements on all other
days. This is a day of rest. Play should not be carried beyond the rest
and refreshment stage.
Nor must we assume that a recognition of play involves neglect of
worship and instruction. Both should be cherished among the delights of
the day. Every attempt to make the day a happy one, by normal play,
associates the emphasis on worship with increased happiness in the
child's mind.
§ 6. THE SUNDAY AFTERNOON PROBLEM
"What shall we do?" the children ask restlessly on Sunday afternoons,
and it is by no means a strange question. All the week they have their
school work, on Saturdays their play. No wonder Sunday afternoon seems
dull. Yet if we older ones use it aright this is our opportunity to give
them the best time of all the week. We can make this part of the day
really a holiday if we just take time to plan it right. There is
something wrong in the home in which the child, as he grows up, does not
look forward happily to his Sunday afternoons.
Sunday afternoon should be a family festival time. Keep it sacred to the
family. Business and social life claim us all the week, and the church
claims its share of this day; but these afternoon hours we can, if we
will, reserve for our own home life, for the closer drawing together of
children and parents. To hold this time sacred for the children and
their interests will help to solve "the Sunday afternoon problem."
1. _The child's question, "What shall I do next?"_--Children are
dynamic, perpetually active. They grow in the direction toward which
their activities are turned. Repression is impossible. We must either
find the best things for them to do, or let them chance on things good
or bad. The following outline for Sunday afternoon is given in the hope
that it may help to answer the "what next."
1. Begin to make _The Family Book_.
2. Give "festival name" to the day, and take an excursion in honor
of the one for whom the day is named.
3. Organize an exploring party to discover peoples and scenes of
long, long ago.
4. Get acquainted with some beautiful home thoughts.
5. Enjoy an evening hour of song and praise.
2. _"The Family Book."_--To start _The Family Book_, mother or father
raises the question at dinner: "What was the best Sunday of all last
year, and why was it the best?" Everyone, from the oldest down to the
least, should have a chance to tell. The statements of the older ones
will encourage the younger.
That question will start another: What is the very best thing we can
remember about the year past? Let everyone take a pencil and paper and
in just ten minutes decide on and write down the one thing best worth
remembering. Perhaps the baby cannot write yet, but he or she will want
paper and pencil, too. Now, instead of making our answers known to one
another, we fold the papers and keep them till the evening meal. We will
open them then and talk it all over. Afterward we are going to copy the
answers into a new book we are going to make.
This new book is to be called _The Family Book_, and we expect to put
into it all the pleasant things we wish to record about our home and
family. Any blank book with ruled lines will do. Some time today we will
elect a keeper of the book, and before we go to bed we will see the
first entry in that book under the title, "Happy Memories of 1915." That
will make a good beginning for _The Family Book_. Next Sunday we will
discuss and set down in the book the happy memories of the intervening
week.
3. _The festival name._--Now, we have been sitting, talking, and writing
as long as the children will care to be still. Suppose we all go
outdoors together, every one of us. What if the weather is bad? It is
seldom truly bad, and there is so much real happiness in going out in
all weathers together.
But where shall we go? There is no fun in walking simply for exercise or
health. Well, says father, we can decide where to go by naming the day.
How? We will find the most interesting birthday or anniversary that
falls today or during the next week. If one of the family has a birthday
then, that one shall choose our walk for us. If not, then when we have
chosen the national hero or heroine whose birthday falls near this time,
or the event the anniversary of which comes nearest, we will go, if
possible, where something will remind us of that person or event.
So we fall to discussing the possibilities. We search through almanacs
until we find the anniversary that suits us all. Perhaps one of the
parents has anticipated all this by looking up the matter, and has a
good name to suggest. Or the older ones may consult a dictionary of
dates. It may turn out to be the birthday of a national hero. In the
city he may have a statue; in the country may be found the kinds of
woods, flowers, or animals he loved.
4. _The exploring party._--But even after the walk it will not be long
before the little ones are asking, "What can we do next?" So we organize
the exploring party. Our object is to discover the countries, scenes,
strange peoples, and most interesting persons we have heard of in the
Bible. We are to find them in the advertising sections of old magazines.
Let each one take a magazine and go through it, looking for oriental
scenes, for pictures of incidents and of men and women that will remind
him of Bible scenes and characters. These are to be cut out, explained,
and arranged in the order of time, as they happened, every member of the
family helping. The same plan may be applied to scenes of missionary
work, using blank books for stories of heroism which children will
illustrate with the magazine pictures.
5. _Home thoughts._--"Home, sweet home," is just a corner of the
afternoon saved for the discovery and reading of selections that are
worth keeping in our memories and are also likely to help us hold our
homes in some measure of the love and reverence they deserve. There are
songs of home that ought never to be forgotten.
6. _Religious reading and songs close the day happily._--Children love
religious reading and songs, provided they are offered for their worth
and not as an exercise, or to be learned as an empty duty. Take down
your Bible and read Psalm 100, "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all
ye lands"; see whether they do not all enjoy the music and majesty of
those lines. You will not find it difficult to secure their co-operation
in learning that by heart.
Then close the day with an hour of song. The children will remember
songs learned thus all their lives; therefore those worth remembering
should be chosen. For one, there is that dear old song many of us
learned at mother's knee, "Jesus loves me, this I know." That and others
that are appropriate can be found in almost every hymnbook. Many books
of school songs also have a few hymns and Sunday songs that children
like.
Parents are puzzled, perhaps most of all, to choose appropriate stories
to read to the children on Sunday. Youngsters prefer, of course, the
told story to the read one, but if you wish to read you will make no
mistake in selecting _Christie's Old Organ_; _Aunt Abbey's Neighbors_,
by Annie T. Slosson; _The Book of Golden Deeds_, by Charlotte M. Yonge;
and _Telling Bible Stories_, by Louise S. Houghton. _Some Great Stories
and How to Tell Them_, by Richard Wyche, and _Story Telling_, by Edna
Lyman, will serve as good guides to what to tell, and how to tell it.
7. _Naming the day._--From week to week variety should enter into the
Sunday program. On the Sunday following the one described above we can
begin at the dinner table the happy task of "naming the day." We can
decide whether it shall be called after one of our own number, whose
birthday falls near this date, or after one of the anniversaries of the
week following.
Perhaps someone suggests calling it after the feast day of the church
year observed by certain churches. That should lead to discussion and
investigation of the meaning of the day.
When all are agreed on a name, write it under its date on your wall
calendar. It will be a convenient suggestion for next year, unless the
decision is for a different name when the day again comes round. It will
also call to mind some of the interesting discussions which it aroused.
After this we might call for _The Family Book_, which now contains, you
will recall, the family's decision as to the best Sunday and the
happiest occurrences of the year before. The keeper, appointed last
week, must bring it out. We can read what we wrote a week ago and decide
on the things worth entering this week. Records of birthdays, special
happenings to each of the family, the bright sayings of little ones, and
the visits of friends and relatives all should go in.
8. _"I remember" stories._--While _The Family Book_ is open is the
psychological moment for father and mother to tell stories of their
childhood. Every child likes to hear the story that begins, "I
remember," and feels a thrill of pride in belonging to something that
goes back and has a history. The old family album is a never-failing
source of delight, not so much because of the pictures as because of
what they suggest of family traditions.
Now is a good time to select some certain thing which shall be used only
on this day, such as a festival lamp or candlestick, some festival
plates or dishes--just one thing or set of things toward the use of
which we can look forward during the week. This helps to make Sunday
what we used to call "a treat."
9. _Golden deeds._--Last week we started _The Family Book_ in which to
keep a record of all the happy experiences that belong to our family.
This week we begin another book. In it we expect to place every week
just one splendid story, the account of a golden deed, some piece of
everyday kindness or heroism of which we have read or heard or which we
have witnessed. Everyone is to have a chance to contribute to this book,
all the family deciding by vote each week as to which story should be
placed on its pages.
Did you read in the paper this week of some brave or kindly deed done by
a boy or a girl, a man or a woman? Did you see someone do an act of
kindness? Cut out the account or write out the story and have it ready
for your own _Golden Deed Book_. Everyone must watch all the week for
the right kind of stories. It is wonderful how much good you will find
in the world when you are looking for it.
Sunday afternoons all the family can hear each story and talk over its
fine points of virtue and goodness. Thus may be developed an
appreciation of the human qualities that are really admirable. We can
discuss also the probability of certain of the stories and the
righteousness of the deeds.
Any blank book will do, or even a composition book. It will help to keep
hands happily occupied if you make your own covers and cut out gilt
letters for the title. Often you can find pictures to illustrate the
stories chosen; sometimes you may prefer to draw the illustrations. Keep
_The Golden Deed Book_ in a safe and convenient place, because there
ought to be something to go into it every week. For instance, did you
read the other day of the young man who jumped in front of a train to
save a young girl? He lost his life, but he saved hers. Can you find
that story and put it in the book? Perhaps you have found one that seems
even more fitting.
10. _Various plans._--Giving happiness creates it. Plan something every
Sunday for the happiness of others. Occasionally go in a body to call on
someone who will be made happy by the visit.
If you walk in the park or elsewhere, see how many things you can
discover that you have read about in the Bible or know to be mentioned
there.
Try the game of "guessing hymns." While someone plays the familiar
tunes, each takes a turn at identifying them and the hymns to which they
belong.
Set aside twenty minutes for each one to write a letter to send to the
brother or sister, relative or friend, at a distance. Even the baby can
scratch something which he thinks is a "real enough" letter in penciled
scribbles.
Close the day with quiet reading and song, or with the memory exercise
in which all endeavor to repeat some simple psalm or a few verses, like
the Beatitudes. All children like to repeat the Lord's Prayer in family
concert.
I. References for Study
Emilie Poulsson, _Love and Law in Child Training_, chaps. i-iv.
Milton Bradley, $1.00.
_Happy Sundays for Children_ and _Sunday in the Home_. Pamphlets.
American Institute of Child Life, Philadelphia, Pa.
II. Further Reading
_Sunday Play._ Pamphlet. American Institute of Child Life,
Philadelphia, Pa.
Hodges, _Training of Children in Religion_, chap. xiii. Appleton,
$1.50.
III. Methods and Materials
_A Year of Good Sundays._ Pamphlet. American Institute of Child
Life, Philadelphia, Pa.
IV. Topics for Discussion
1. What is the real problem of Sunday in the family? Is it that of
securing quiet or of wisely directing the action of the young?
2. Recall your childhood's Sundays. Were they for good or ill?
3. What are the arguments against children playing on Sunday? Is
there any essential relation between the play of children and the
wide-open Sunday of commercialized amusements?
4. Can you describe forms of play in which practically all the
family might unite?
5. What characteristics should distinguish play on Sundays from
other days? Is it wise to attempt thus to distinguish this day?
6. Criticize the suggestions on occupations for Sunday afternoons.
7. Recall any especially helpful forms of the use of this day in
your childhood, or coming under your observation.
FOOTNOTES:
[31] See chap. xvii, "The Family and the Church."
[32] See chap. vii on "Directed Activity," and the references for study
at its end.
[33] Much may be learned by a study of Primary plans in a modern Sunday
school. See Athearn, _The Church School_, chap. vi.
[34] Since we are dealing here especially with religious education in
the family, the author refers to his more extended treatment of the
question of children in church services in _Efficiency in the Sunday
School_, chap. xv.