I don’t want to wear a party hat

I don’t want to go to birthday party for Relief Society.

 

I mean…. I love Relief Society History. I love LOVE love seeing Camille N. Johnson participating in the Maternal Outcomes Matter Showers (MOMS tour). I love it even more that the church is doing MOMS. I LOVED seeing Johnson and Bonnie Cordon on Instagram wishing women well for International Women’s Day from Nairobi, Kenya. To me, that is sisterhood.

 

Not a birthday party. Certainly not a party hat.

 

Birthday parties invoke images of super sugary finger foods, chemically colours icing and cupcakes in the latest fashion—sometimes even bacon. I am not anti-birthday party—I have thrown my share for my own children, spouse and friends.  But that is different, and personal. Sitting in a crowded room with women I did not know well, playing “Sisters Bingo” wearing a hat with a too-tight elastic strap around my chin is not my idea of anything outside of torture.

 

I want to tie quilts. I want to sew reusable period pads. I want to have deep conversations about my Saviour, and I want to learn as much as I can about our founding mothers…. Including the women who started their own local relief societies in Poland, Brazil, and South Africa and more!  I want to serve and learn!

 

I do not want to wear a party hat.

 

Can you imagine of the male priesthood holders did that on the “birthday” of the Melchizedek priesthood? That in “in early June” instead of “Adventure Camp” or “Priesthood Camp” and all those powerful male-centric ideas…. What if the men had a birthday party? (Women can watch the men at the party, because we “share” priesthood that way).

 

The men could sit at round tables with baby-blue tablecloths, adorned with party hats, random candy bouquets and baby blue paper plates. Maybe even a blue unicorn paper plate! They can pass out bread rolls with the message “You are Kneaded,” eat finger foods, and play party games like “Brothers Bingo”.

 

Is that fitting for recognising the importance of the priesthood? And if not, then why do we do that for the Relief Society?

 

I know not all wards do Relief Society birthday parties, many do celebrations. In my previous stake, they are hosting a stake-wide activity that teaches three classes on rotation: Self-defence at any age, cyber security and positive mental health techniques. *sigh* I am homesick. Homesick for former stakes, for feeling empowered as a woman, and being recognised with my charity-inspired actions mean so much more that my assigned party attendance.

 

I enjoy gathering to celebrate someone on occasion, but for this…. It’s all about creating a birthday for an organization that at the moment, I sometimes resent that I am forbidden agency to join; that my membership is compulsory and swung around for what feels like political reasons “one of the largest women’s organizations…” when I crave developing true sisterhood with my fellow female saints around the world. I would never require any of these women to wear a party hat for me.

 

But if it MUST be called a birthday, rather than a celebration or a commemoration, I would prefer something akin to the spirit of Vesta Pierce Crawford’s poem found in the Relief Society magazine of 1932, invoking the spirits of those before us:

 

Birthday

(In Memory of the Organization of the Relief Society Ninety Years Ago)

Mists of many years have fallen on Nauvoo

But the women brave who laboured there

This day is glowing memory live anew,

And from altered arch of time and space

They reach their eager hands to us,

For we as daughters of that steadfast race,

Have sought to follow where they passed

And find the window and the orphaned one;

In paths where want and sorrow walk

Still work of love and charity is done;

And yet we could not serve so well,

Or seek with faith for wisdom’s road to go

Had you not set an ensign on out way,

O valiant sisters of the long ago!

 

 

Because, honestly? I’m a little embarrassed to be wearing a party hat in celebration of their hard work.