Mothball Sunday

Mothball Sunday fell in Epiphany-tide this year. At least, it might have fallen last Sunday here in Cloquet, Minnesota.

Mothball Sunday is a moveable feast. It might be celebrated in Advent, during December. This special Sunday might add to the Twelve Days of Christmas. Most likely it will fall during the season of Epiphany. Rarely do we celebrate this Sunday during Lent. Some few years, we do not have this Sunday at all.

The date of celebration varied from year to year and even place to place. I doubt the Bible Belt ever experienced this Sunday in their churches.

You  will not find Mothball Sunday determined by the Solar Calendar like Christmas. We don't calculate its place in our lives according to the Lunar Calendar like Easter. Meteorology governs the date of Mothball Sunday.

I considered it a big feast in the 1950's.  On this Sunday a different incense wafted through the congregation. This feast, however, has slipped from our awareness and consciousness.

I noticed, when I was young, that Mothball Sunday fell after the first large sub-zero, arctic blast when the temperature plunged to -20 or -25 or even -30 or more.

People would get out their rarely-used, really heavy, warm winter garments. When I was young these garments were very often made of wool. Taken from storage, they smelled of the mothballs used to protect them from the insects that feasted on wool. Church on Mothball Sunday smelled of mothballs. By the next week, if folks still needed these really warm clothes the smell disappeared as the heavy coat, wool pants or sweater aired.

For some years, I served as an altar boy. As we moved from one kneeling person to another at communion time, I would catch the whiff of  Mothballs. Mostly the old people smelled (who who were then the age that I am now.) I thought of these woolen garments as quaint and old fashioned like the people who wore them.

People who were then the age I am now: Yes! I have my favorite cherished woolen garment. The 'long pants' I pack when outfitting  myself for a canoe trip. Long pants is that garment warn on a cold, windy, damp day. I wear long pants when the evening chill has replaced the warm day and mosquitoes swam. I wear old army surplus woolen dress pants. Wood sheds water, seems warm even when wet, dries quicker than blue jeans, fends off the wind - especially when they have not been washed for a couple of seasons. When properly 'seasoned' - unwashed -  a pair of woolen pants seems to keep mosquitoes at bay.

I know people on the trail smile at the old-fashioned quaintness of my outdoor gear. However, I don't smell - of mothballs at least.

New  synthetic winter fabrics and hi-tech textiles and  have driven most wool from our wardrobes, so Mothball Sunday has disappeared. Maybe folks today are more conscious of how they smell, and air out their clothes (10 minutes in the clothes drier) before they wear them. After all, when I was 8 we only bathed once a week. We usually bathed on Saturday before going to church. (Until a teenager, I though the maxim "cleanliness is next to Godliness" referred  to the Saturday Evening bath before we when to Church on Sunday.

Last Sunday should have been Mothball Sunday in Church, but the air smelled clean like Irish Spring or Life Boy.