Wearing Sunday best still in fashion
WALNUT CREEK, Calif. Every Sunday for the past 26 years, Gloria McCullough of Oakland, Calif., has chosen her church outfit with the utmost attention to detail. When she wears her red and black Kay Unger dress, she pairs it with her red silk hat from Saks Fifth Avenue, and her favorite red pumps.
On Easter, McCullough, 59, stepped into the nave of St. Benedict Roman Catholic Church in Oakland, Calif., dressed in a two-piece Kay Unger gray suit with black pumps and a feather-topped hat. The hat is essential. McCullough, who is Catholic, has one for every Sunday of the year.
"That's just the way I was brought up," McCullough says. "My mother and father always dressed up for church. He wore suits and hats and she had her gloves."
Today, it is not unheard of to wear jeans to job interviews and flip-flops on first dates. Even when it comes to worship, there is an increasing come-as-you-are approach preached across faiths to encourage participation among youths. But in some denominations and among certain communities, particularly African-Americans, attending church in your finest duds including furs, sequined shawls and ornate hats involves almost as much tradition and ceremony as a worship service.
Marylyn Eyers recalls with fondness the Sundays of her childhood in Stockton, Calif. After church, her mother would drop her off in the driveway, and by the time she parked the car and joined her daughter in the house, Eyers had peeled off her dress and stockings and put on her jeans. She didn't like dressing up as a child, and she doesn't like it anymore today, at the age of 74.
But, every Sunday morning, Eyers still dons a dress before heading to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Newark, Calif., where she lives.
"Wearing my Sunday best represents the respect, reverence, and heartfelt worship I owe to God, my Heavenly Father," says Eyers, who is Mormon. "How can I hope for his spirit to be with me if I have not presented myself in a respectful manner?"
The sentiment is felt across denominations. And there is a history to it. Father Jay Matthews of St. Benedict Church says dressing up in the Catholic community harks back to the turn of the 20th century, a time when people didn't have many personal possessions.
"They had their school clothes, play clothes and church outfit, because church was the one day of the week to really dress up," he said.
