American Boys' Confirmation Suits: Jeff's 1978 Confirmation


Figure 1.--.

One American contributor to HBC recalls a frather touching confirmation suit his mother made for him because they did not have money for a new suit.

My Family

I was raised Roman Catholic in a small farming town in the far southern suburbs of Chicago. During the 1960s and 1970's, there weren't many choices for churches within the small community; the Catholic Church, Protestant Church, and Lutheran Church were the choices, and as children, we had no choice. My father wasn't a spiritual man and would have preferred the Lutheran Church over my mother's Catholicism, but it was a mother's duty to raise the children back then. St. Paul's was an integral part of my boyhood, for the church was involved in many youth activities, including Boy Scouts, catechism, and weekend dances. We all knew the parish priest, knew where he lived and often passed by the rectory on the way to school (St. Paul's itself was located across the street from the public elementary school).

Sunday Best

We were always told to wear our Sunday best, but as the years progressed, jeans were more commonplace except for the holidays and special events. Yet I recall that our family (mother, a sister and a brother; father never went), always tried to look our best. There was a marked difference between dress clothes and play/everyday clothes in those days. Jeans were everyday wear whereas dress pants were only for dressy occasions. Church was one such occasion.

First Communion

I don't recall my first communion that much, accept that the bishop presided over the ceremony as he did for the important ceremonies that included the youth. Mostly I recalled how boring church was, always being nauseated by some of the censor smoke, and having to attend Sunday School with many of the kids I went to public school with. For church, we normally wore blue pants and a blue or white long/short sleeved dress shirt (depending on the season), and black dress shoes and dark socks. Ties were for the holidays, as were suit coats. These were normal clothes for me, and I felt more comfortable in the dress slacks than the jeans.

Me and My Clothes

I was a relatively slim child until I was about eleven or so when my thyroid went berserk and unnoticed until I became a victim of cretinism. My views on clothing were affected by this, for the heavier I became, the less pleased I was with the jeans, T-shirts and the like. The jeans always wore out at the thighs first, due to friction; the shirts always tore at the flanks, due to my girth. I was summarily forced into an adolescence of black leather lace up oxfords due to the fact of my flat footedness, having to visit the podiatrist regularly to have my feet cast for inserts for my shoes to help build a nonexistent arch. I hated wearing white socks with black shoes, since my father did this and I never liked the look, so I always demanded dark socks (which was the norm at the time, until one entered middle school and began proper gym class, including a gym uniform of school shorts (very short and tight fitting cotton shirts with the school's name stenciled on one leg) and white T-shirt (again stenciled with school name), and at that time I discovered white athletic knee socks [HBC note: tube socks], usually with stripes.

Being a fat kid, I wanted desperately to have a body like the normal boys, a normal body, and the one's I singled out had muscular calves and wore knee socks, sort of hero worship which coexisted well with my comic book hobby; also, I began to wear knee socks full-time around this same period, but there was more colors to choose from than dark, dressy colors; tan, red and sky blue were popular). I didn't start wearing tennis/gym shoes full time until I was out of high school, and even then as only work shoes. Button-down shirts seemed to show less of my obesity and felt better than be ing exposed in only a T-shirt or pull-over shirt.

Polyester

One fabric that I came to dread, mostly due to the chafe factor, was polyester. It was a relatively new fabric at the time with "better" maintenance than cottons or so the advertising went. It was used to create some of the most horrendous clothing of the century, and was highly flammable (unlike the newer polyester blends of today). It was a course material than was dyed in various outrageous colors. In fact, the seventies was a synthetic fabric decade that gave rise to the proliferation of nylon and polyester and rayon. Together with widening lapels, widening neckties and color, Technicolor everywhere, the 1970's was quite garish. And as a boy I wore it all. Being in a middle class family, money sometimes became tight. The cotton/wool blend dress pants were replaced by polyester ones.

Confirmation

My thirteenth year was a meaning full one, for at 13 years of age I graduated from middle school and also had my confirmation at church. Confirmation is a ceremony that marks the end of childhood and the beginning of adulthood in the Catholic Church, and we were expected to take the responsibility of adult Catholics, in other words, to take Church seriously. At this time, catechism went all out to drill all the tenets and laws of the church into your head and soul, then for the ceremony we adopt a saint's name as our own. I chose "Michael". For our Confirmation, we had to make a sash out of a velveteen material and decorate it with various Catholic symbols and the name of our patron Saint. We wore this at the ceremony.

My Confirmation Suit

My mother made some of our clothes at this time, and to save money (since I was graduating middle school, and my brother was being confirmed simultaneously, since he was only 11 months younger than I was), she decided to make blazers for both me and my brother. I'm not sure if we helped pick out the fabric as we often did when Mother made our clothes. I ended up with a red and white plaid made out of polyester. My brother's blazer was also plaid, but I think he had a green/blue scheme to his (all colors seemed markedly brighter in those days), but we both hated them. Everyone else had plain black, blue or brown blazers or wore only shirt sleeves for the ceremony. I wore navy blue polyester pants and black lace up shoes, white shirt and a tie of some unrecalled color, together with that sash draped across my wide girth. I became an adult Catholic while looking like a clown, but such outfits were normal at the time (and at least I didn't have matching pants, which were common in that decade as well).

I'm not sure if the sash was a parish event, or if it was mandatory by Church catechism, since it was an ornamental statement for all to witness our devotion to continuing in the Catholic faith. I know that my own was red, but can't recall if we had a choice of color (we mostly glued sequins and sparkles to the stenciled images), and we had to use a symbol of the church I think. But I do believe that confirmation is at thirteen, whereas first communion is at 7 or 8; just for the fact that most teenagers must be confirmed before they have driving privileges, since by age 16 many leave the church because of being a teenager, etc. I stopped going after confirmation as well, since it was my choice, but I waded through it until I was about 16 or 17.

Graduation

Gradation was easier, since we wore the usual graduation gown over pants and shirt and tie. The only uncomfortable thing about middle school graduation came from being in the school choir, which wore a white sash around our necks over the blue gowns. During the heat of early June in an un-air conditioned gymnasium, it was a bit oppressive. But at least the colors were normal and not laughable.

Jeff S.















Navigate the Boys' Historical Clothing Web Site religious pages:
[Return to the Main confirmation page]
[American] [French]



Navigate the Historic Boys' Clothing Web Site:
[Introduction] [Chronologies] [Style Index] [Biographies]
[Bibliographies] [Contributions] [Activities] [Countries]
[Boys' Clothing Home]



Navigate the Historic Boys' Clothing Web chronological pages:
[The 1920s] [The 1930s] [The 1940s] [The 1950s] [The 1960s] [The 1970s] [The 1980s] [The 1990s]



Navigate the Historic Boys' Clothing Web style pages:
[Short pants suits] [Blazers] [Jackets] [Kilts]
[Sailor suits] [Sailor hats]
[Ring bearer/page costumes] [Shortalls]



Created: January 1, 2000
Last edited: January 1, 2000