One year we had a brown horse in the church parking lot. Bonnet-wearing girls and cowboy-hatted boys took turns “riding” him around the building. Another year, I helped organize a stake-wide celebration with all the bells and whistles. Well, no actual bells and whistles, but we dipped candles, practiced stick pulls, listened to people sing “Come, Come Ye Saints,” and heard stories of the bravery and travails of our spiritual ancestors. Other years, we shook cream in baby food jars til the butter made its appearance. We reenacted dramatic scenes in costumes, soaked cornhusks so they could be shaped into little dolls, and then sang as we “walked and walked and walked.” Last summer, I laced up my boots, tied on a long apron and played my violin while primary children learned to dance in an 1850s style reel.
I’m talking about Pioneer Day celebrations! Because I love them. Without irony. I’m a straight-up pioneer fangirl. I love reading firsthand accounts, singing “Here comes the ox cart” out of the Children’s Songbook, and looking at images of Mormon pioneers, such as the one above. I cry when I think about the babies and mothers and children and fathers who endured extremes of hardship: hunger, heat, thirst, cold, loneliness, fear, handcarts, but I exult a little, too, when I think of pioneer wagons circling in at night and I imagine the sound of a fiddle box opening and strings tuning.
My love for Pioneer Day goes way back. I suppose it even goes back to my Pioneer ancestors, those hardy Europeans who had no sooner gotten off the boats in New York then they had to continue traveling westward. I especially love our family story of my great great great grandparents who happened to ride the same boat across the Atlantic. Then they crossed the plains during the same window of time, though not in the same company. When they arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, they happened to meet again, and, recognizing each other from the ocean journey, “got married three days later in the Endowment House,” says the family history. Pragmatic and romantic!
A little less way back, my love for Pioneer Day stems from my childhood, specifically the year I got to ride on a float with Brigham Young. I was dressed in green and white gingham with a floral bonnet knotted under my chin. And Brother Brigham sat at the front of the wagon, driving the team. And all of us costumed kids rode through my hometown, waving broadly at all of the summer parade attendees. Sure, Brother Brigham was just a ward member, but boy!, his beard looked exactly like old President Young. And in a spirit of enthusiasm likely fueled by my love of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series, I thought myself ready to gather buffalo chips if necessary. In other words, I felt a deep sense of connection to those earlier Mormon pioneers, a tribal bond that curled up from my toes to my pigtails.
The bond still binds today. The Mormon pioneer story still grabs at my heart, thought for more nuanced reasons than I was capable of understanding as a child. I still love hearing about the miracles, about the pie that appeared on the path, or about little Walter who got lost but was found by his father a day later, about newly widowed Mary Fielding Smith who had the wherewithal and courage to get across those brutal plains despite the male naysayers who didn’t think she could do it.
But now I appreciate the messiness of the pioneer epic, the stubbornness and conviction, the squabbling and the sharing, the fear and the vision. I love the humanity on display. Then, as now, the collective church was a mix of personalities, agendas and motives. There were some with the means, but many without. There were those who profited and those who sacrificed everything. The Mormon pioneer saga gives us everything an epic story requires: heroes, villains (and I’m not talking about Indian tribes), unforgiving terrain, heartbreak and more heartbreak, and a unifying goal. These epic details have been told and retold in the intervening century and a half. Some of these shared pioneer stories have been embellished so generously that their details no longer bear much resemblance to truth, I’m sure, and other accounts are so true we cannot bear to hear them. But this mythologizing is to be expected. This is a story that helps to define our tribe. And at least once a year, on July 24th, we tell that story again.
Somewhere in between mythology and truth, between grief and pride, I celebrate my pioneer heritage today. I will make do with what I have, and I will offer a blessing on the sick oxen in my life, and I will continue to put one foot in front of the other as I journey to new frontiers.
Now tell me about some of your favorite Pioneer Day celebrations!
Nicely done, Erin. I wonder if the stories would be as powerful if they weren’t mythologized a bit? Isn’t that the point, or at least part of the point? You do a nice job of teasing that out. . .
love this! i am a pioneer fan girl too!
“The past isn’t dead, it isn’t even past.” I like Pioneer Day too, the one day I don’t mind when myth and history mix.
Great post, Erin. There is a lot to like in the Pioneer narrative, with its focus on perseverance and selflessness. And, as you point out, the narrative is eminently translatable into pageantry (unlike other admirable narratives, like maybe the invention of the smallpox vaccine). And this, too, makes it an excellent point for celebration.
Groups choose odd points for celebration. In the U.S., we have a day set aside to celebrate the labor movement. The Jewish tradition has celebrations of events which seem a little unusual, to an outsider. But the underlying narrative isn’t always the point — the act of communal celebration can bring people together, whether in celebrating a revolt against a political enemy which hasn’t existed for thousands of years, or for that matter in entirely secular celebrations like throwing popcorn during the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
“I celebrate my pioneer heritage today. I will make do with what I have, and I will offer a blessing on the sick oxen in my life, and I will continue to put one foot in front of the other as I journey to new frontiers.”
Love this. Thanks Erin.
Claire, that was the line that struck me as well. Beautiful Erin.
No pioneer day celebration in our stake this year. Guess that’s what happens when you disband the activities committee? But I do remember having some very fun celebrations in past years, and we celebrated with the family in our own way. Thanks for reminding me about them!
Sad! I’ve mostly lived in Texas and Louisiana, so I’ve heard many people whine about Pioneer Day–who cares about pioneer day? I’m not from Utah, I’m a convert, blah blah blah. I’m not from Utah, either, but I can appreciate an opportunity to remember people who sacrificed so much for something that I am now a part of–even if they’re not my blood relatives.
I was just teaching the “oxcart song” to the primary kids and told them if they ever wanted to show off their Mormon street cred, they’d have to learn it. ;)
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