What Men Really Want for Father's Day

By Roberto Vargas, AlterNet. Posted June 14, 2008.

When I ask fathers what they desire for Father's Day it's not more stuff like electronic gadgets and clothing, unnecessary items that only contribute to the pollution of our planet. What many would ideally appreciate is a consequential gathering of family and friends where we could share about or from our experience being fathers. Some of us would love the opportunity to converse about something meaningful like how to stop the destruction of our Earth, elect a new president, or how our families can practice the values we want to see in our society.

Maybe, I'm old fashioned, yet for me fatherhood is about caring for my children, family and community. It involves earning an income to ensure my family has what we need to survive and succeed; raising my children to be self-confident and caring individuals; modeling values of respect for family, community and Mother Earth; and doing what I can to ensure peace, justice and a sustainable future. For me, fatherhood is the long-term project of learning to be porvida (for life and love), that is a caring person, responsible parent, and an activist.

Yes, I'm a family and cultural activist. As it is essential to engage in the politics of advocacy or voting for change, I believe it is equally vital to foster change that makes us more loving, caring, and powerful individuals and families. To advance a just world, we must create loving families. A great time for doing this is at our special occasions when we bring together family and friends, like anniversaries, birthdays, or holidays; like Father's Day! For this reason, years ago when my adult children were still small, we began the fun process of reinventing how we celebrated holidays, including Father's Day.

The first U.S. Father's Day was celebrated by a Methodist Church congregation in Fairmont, West Virginia, on July 2, 1908 to honor the 361 men, many fathers, who died in a local mining explosion in Monongah.

Just as this community honored these fathers for their dedicated labor back then, we began doing the same in our family gatherings by using them to remind our children of our working class origins, and more.

Over the years we created an opportunity for our children to honor their father by helping me reflect on how well I was doing as a father and also allowing me to advance the vision I hold for our family.

For this celebration, like other occasions that involve honoring a person, we organize a unity circle and invite those present to share their words of gratitude for the person being recognized. We also invite the honoree to express their thoughts or vision. For our family Father's Day celebration this typically involved a couple of circles, our intimate morning circle of my wife and our daughters and another afternoon or evening circle, when other family and friends were invited.

Whether small or large, the ceremony follows a similar design. Once the circle of people is brought together, Rebeca, my wife, or I will burn a few leaves of white sage which in our indigenous tradition signifies sacred time. For this occasion she provides the opening prayer, and afterwards invites those present to take the talking stick to offer heart words to me as the father being recognized. In our tradition whoever holds the talking stick is to speak honest words and everyone else is responsible to listen. If it was just our small children present, Rebeca would invite them to share "Some good words for papi, something you like about him and maybe something he can improve on". For our larger group gathering, the invitation was often to share words of gratitude or well wishes for each of the fathers present. For me this part of the ceremony is always uplifting. It nurtures one's spirit to hear words of appreciation from those you love, and to hear suggestions for improvement. Also, these expressions make the feeling of love very present.

See more stories tagged with: activism, fathers day, community involvement

Roberto Vargas is an educator and consultant on personal and group empowerment, the ceremony leader for activist communities and organizations, and the author of Family Activism: Empowering Your Community, Beginning with Family and Friends.

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