What is Father’s Day? And why should we bother with it?

It’s Father’s Day on Sunday, and I’m feel­ing slightly con­flic­ted about how to cel­eb­rate it. Or whether to cel­eb­rate it. Isn’t it all a big mar­ket­ing con? Made up by Amer­ic­ans? Just designed to make us con­sume more? I don’t need to buy my dad a card (wast­ing more of the world’s pre­cious resources) just to let him know that I’m grate­ful he exists, do I?

I wouldn’t find all this quite so con­fus­ing were it not for the fact that when I con­sider my reac­tion to Mother’s Day – I feel quite dif­fer­ently. Yes, I know that it’s com­mer­cial­ised etc. etc. but the thought of not cel­eb­rat­ing it fills me with horror. Firstly because, as a mum myself, I know I’d be really sad if I didn’t get a card from my own daugh­ter, and secondly because, well, it’s Mother’s Day. It’s dif­fer­ent. Isn’t it?

You don’t have to be Pro­fessor Robert Win­ston to know that asking a child to choose a favour­ite between their mother and their father is a bit of a no-​​no when it comes to child psy­cho­logy. Could it pos­sibly be true that I just appre­ci­ate my mum a tiny bit more than my dad? I refuse to accept this con­clu­sion. So per­haps it is just that Father’s Day just doesn’t feel like a “proper” day. I need to do some research.

Where does Father’s Day come from?

The story accord­ing to Wiki­pe­dia (where all inter­net research seems to begin), is that the modern cel­eb­ra­tion of Father’s Day did begin in the USA in 1908.

“In West Vir­ginia, it was first cel­eb­rated as a church ser­vice at Wil­li­ams Memorial Meth­od­ist Epis­copal Church South, now known as Cent­ral United Meth­od­ist Church. Grace Golden Clayton, who is believed to have sug­ges­ted the ser­vice to the pastor, is believed to have been inspired to cel­eb­rate fath­ers after the deadly mine explo­sion in nearby Monongah the prior Decem­ber. This explo­sion killed 361 men, many of them fath­ers and recent immig­rants to the United States from Italy. Another pos­sible inspir­a­tion for the ser­vice was Moth­ers’ Day, which had been cel­eb­rated for the first time two months prior in Grafton, West Vir­ginia, a town about 15 miles (24 km) away.”

But it’s now cel­eb­rated in hun­dreds of coun­tries around the world – from March to Novem­ber. And in some coun­tries it’s not just about “fath­ers”. For example, in Ger­many, Her­rentag – “gentleman’s day” – is all about cel­eb­rat­ing everything man. And of course, it involves drink­ing and hiking. In Mozam­bi­que, Man’s Day isn’t an annual event but a weekly one.

Des­pite these inter­est­ing vari­ations, all my online research points to the fact that what we’ll be cel­eb­rat­ing this Sunday (or not) is an event inven­ted in the USA. But, the story is quite a sweet one, and doesn’t feel like a com­pletely bogus mar­ket­ing inven­tion. It’s got me feel­ing slightly dif­fer­ently about the day – but I’m still not convinced.

Are moth­ers more import­ant than fathers?

I move onto to some highly sci­entific quant­it­at­ive and qual­it­at­ive research to answer this next ques­tion. When I poll 50 or so of my col­leagues and friends, asking: “How do you cel­eb­rate father’s /​ mother’s day?” I dis­cover that just over half of them cel­eb­rate both. A third only cel­eb­rate Mother’s Day and the rest stay out of either. Not a single one of them said that they would only cel­eb­rate Father’s Day. The sub­ject stirs up plenty of debate when I ask if this is because we prefer our Mas to our Pas. One col­league points out: “Surely it just depends on what role/​importance they have (had) on your life. I only cel­eb­rate mother’s day as my par­ents sep­ar­ated when I was a young ‘un. Neither my dad or my step mum had any role in my upbring­ing so why should I give into another com­mer­cially pro­moted ‘tradition’?”

For another it’s much more straight­for­ward: “I don’t cel­eb­rate Father’s Day because I always thought it was an Amer­ican thing.”

Cut to the chase and give me some Father’s Day ideas

So, I’m no closer to making a decision – though I do plan to tell my dad how much I love and appre­ci­ate him very soon. If it hap­pens to be on Sunday, and that mes­sage comes writ­ten in a card, is it really such a bad thing?

In the mean time, if you’re look­ing for ideas for ways to be nice to your dad that don’t line the pock­ets of card companies:

• You could do worse than start with this very useful list from Mash​able​.com.
• Or put up a pictorial big-​​up to the old man like this Flickr user has.
• Or a video spe­cially made for dad?
• Of course, as with any other spe­cial event or occa­sion, e-​​cards are a great way to spread the love without cut­ting down trees.

Or maybe a just big hug would suffice?

IMAGE by Flickr user ShutterSparks

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Ori­gin­ally posted 2008-​​06-​​10 05:33:00. Repub­lished by Blog Post Promoter

Tags: Family, Father, Fathers Day, Holidays, Home, Mother's Day, United States, West Virginia
Posted in Lifestyle | View Comments

Five top tips on how to cook a goose

I’m fol­low­ing the fash­ion this year and cook­ing a goose for our christ­mas dinner. Appar­ently, it’s not as easy as it looks. Luck­ily I’ve got my mum’s top tips for the per­fectly cooked goose.

It being the season of good will and all that, I thought I’d share them with you.

1. Cook­ing a goose is not easy. It’s not like cook­ing a turkey or a chicken. If you’re feel­ing nervous – you should be. Make sure you have got a big enough pan to not only hold the goose but also a cook­ing rack under­neath it. A goose must not cook in its own fat. If it does, really bad things happen. I don’t know what they are, but take my mum’s word for it. Fat needs to run off. A goose can pro­duce a tre­mend­ous amount of fat!

2. Don’t wrap your goose in cook­ing foil. You may have heard that geese dry out really easily (see point one above). This is true. But put­ting foil round it won’t help. And it will prob­ably stick to the bird and burn. So def­in­itely don’t use it.

3. The out­side of your goose must be very dry. To make sure you get lovely crispy skin that’s nice to eat, your goose needs to be dried. If pos­sible, hang it up some­where to dry for 24 hours before you roast it. Pat it down with kit­chen towel before you put it in the oven. If you like, you can very lightly salt the skin.

4. The inside of your goose must be very moist and juicy. Put lots of fruit and juicy stuff­ing in the middle because it has a large interior cavity and it can dry out. This is the trick to making sure your goose doesn’t look like a shriv­elled prune when you take it out of the oven.

5. The fat is useful. Use the fat to cook your pota­toes in. Makes them taste amaz­ing and really crispy.

The cook­ing time for a goose will vary dra­mat­ic­ally depend­ing on its size. Gordon Ramsay recom­mends about 15 mins for each kilo. This BBC video might have more detailed advice … if you can be bothered to watch it – I couldn’t, I rang my mum instead. She says: the oven should be about 150 degrees for a fan oven – and then you just have to keep an eye on it. When the bird starts to get a good colour (and you’ve removed the excess fat to start your roast pota­toes) use a two pronged fork and press into the thigh meet until you reach the bone.?

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Ori­gin­ally posted 2008-​​12-​​23 04:03:00. Repub­lished by Blog Post Promoter

Tags: Chicken, Cook, Domestic turkey, Goose, Gordon Ramsay, Home, Potato, Stuffing
Posted in Food | View Comments