Here's a 1997 account from my sister Marjorie (Marge) A. Kangas (1953-2023), whom I also interviewed for the FINNS oral history thesis. I didn't have time to include every interview in the thesis because in the spring of 1997 I was on academic deadline (I had to meet it or not graduate.) But readers might find occasional outtake interviews to be interesting.
The setting:
Marge’s calico cat Beans sits on a chair at her owner's kitchen table, eyes the whirring tape recorder, and—whiskers twitching—watches the interview. Marge has always been an animal lover and has cared for a succession of cats and dogs whether she resided in Arizona, California, Pennsylvania, or back home in New Hampshire. The interview took place at her apartment in Peterborough, NH.
Marge speaks as follows:
My earliest awareness of being Finn was that our family went to the Independent Apostolic Lutheran song services instead of a regular church. Also, we had Apostolic Lutheran kids at school who weren’t allowed to watch films, even though the films were educational and an everyday part of the curriculum. As young children, we called the Apostolic children the ‘Sin Kids’ because sin was their chief topic of conversation when talking to others who didn’t belong to their church.
And even though we belonged to a church that had the same origins as theirs, and even though we were cousins to many of the Apostolics through the Somero side of our family, the Sin Kids didn’t accept us as Finns. When we returned to school in September with a little bit of chipped nail polish left on our fingertips from the annual [New Ipswich] Children’s Fair, the Sin Kids said we were going to hell. If you curled your hair, you were going to hell; or watched TV, you were going to hell; or listened to Rock and Roll [music], you were going to hell. Anything like that.
At the Independent Apostolic Lutheran song services, the older folks would sit in a circle and a preacher who had arrived from Michigan or Minnesota would preach a sermon in Finn, then English. Usually the preacher was Matt Reed. I heard stories about Matt—he was hunting with a friend and a grizzly bear killed his friend—out in Minnesota, I think.
Then they’d sing English or Finnish hymns. Our mother’s aunt would rejoice and get up from her chair, clapping her hands, and she terrified me. Some of these Finn tunes that we were singing would get pretty lively and that’s when she’d get up and shout and dance.
I’d say to my mother, “Why is Auntie doing that?”
And my mother would say, “Oh, she’s happy because she knows she’s going to go to heaven.”
This usually happened just before refreshments. My mother’s aunt would then hug all the kids within reach. I think she just got high—high on religion. And at the time I thought it was embarrassing—I was worried about her hugging me. My mother and father never danced, so to see someone else doing it was totally foreign—we just weren’t used to these open displays of emotion. Also, dancing was one thing the Sin Kids had said would send you to hell.
However, I thought attending song services far better than having to go to a regular church because you got to eat, for one thing. You got to run around with the other kids until you were exhausted. We’d get all hot and sweaty outside and then come into the kitchen and have tuna-fish sandwiches. And, of course, there was coffee. To this day, whenever I smell coffee brewing, it smells like tuna-fish sandwiches to me. When I took a psychology course in college, they told me I had a food fixation because I was always drawing pictures of sandwiches.
Some Finns held church services in the Central School building for a while. The first time I ever went to these services was with my mother. When they came around with the collection plate, I grabbed a 50-cent piece. My mother slapped me and I put it back. I honestly did not know what the collection plate was for.
But soon after that, we started going to Our Redeemer Chapel [Missouri Synod Lutheran]. There, everything was church: Vacation Bible School, Sunday School, Luther League. Assemble Horns of Plenty, go Christmas caroling, Ladies’ Guild. Easter—being dragged out at the crack of dawn or even before that to go to a sunrise service. Plus we had to sing at these sunrise services.
One of the unspoken rules was that you don’t go into church smiling—don’t let anyone think you’re enjoying this. Our mother always played the role of self-appointed church truant officer. I don’t know how she managed to take all this stuff in—she’d be looking at what so-and so’s doing and notice that so-and-so didn’t make it to church this Sunday or so-and-so’s biting their nails.
I considered Sunday School very depressing because it was always about Christ being whipped and put to death. Sometimes I thought the pastor was Jesus—it seemed he took it all so personally. In the Bible, it seemed to me that Christ sometimes gave people some very short answers—it sounded like He’d cut someone off.
In Sunday School, the instructors were talking about this wonderful, loving man, but sometimes He just seemed to say, “Aaaah—go get some sleep or something.”
I brought this to the pastor’s attention and he had to think about that one—it was the first time he didn’t have an answer ready.
Many long hours of sitting in the Missouri Synod Lutheran church taught me how to daydream because, after Sunday School, we ran upstairs to the sterile pews for another hour of services. We’d have to get up and sing—we didn’t memorize Hail Mary’s but we had Glory Be’s and other things to say over and over.
And then we’d finally get to sit down for the sermon. I’d look at the flies—they’d roll over on the floor and kick their legs. I’d practically be in outer space by the time the sermon stopped. Naturally kids are going to think of something entertaining because they can’t tolerate the boredom of sitting still.
Very interesting. I can relate a bit to it in some ways. I was taken to a Polish Catholic Church when I was young. The Mass was given in Latin, Polish and English which meant it would go on for hours. I was bored with everything but the music. My Dad sang in the choir. The church was very ornate and I loved looking at the full size angel statues holding lamps. In summer they had large fans which sounded like an airplane engine whine. Also I am definitely going to have coffee the next time I make a tuna sandwich. Thanks for this account.
I also can relate to your experience, just substitute French for Polish. We were told we would go to purgatory if we set foot in a Lutheran church. This was a venial sin. However, not attending church on Sunday was a mortal sin. Every first Friday of the month the nuns would march the class to the church next door for confession. We had to tell our sins to the priest. I had to make up sins so I'd have something to say. I wasn't sure if saying "Up your nose" to a nun in Finnish was a sin, sometimes it wasn't her nose. Was it a sin to picture what she looked like in her underwear? Was it a sin to hide the wooden ruler she used to hit your fingers. I'm left handed and for some reason it was considered the devil's hand.
Thus, I write illegibly with my right hand. After one of these finger slaps to get even (not smart) I wrote my assignment in the most microscopical print (not script) I could manage so that magnifying glass was needed to read it.
Was that the Greenville parish? I recall a number of those types of stories being related to me by the Catholic kids. I thought of the nuns must be a group of tyrants.
Yes, Greenville. Some nuns were good but many were mean. You had to pay attention to the teacher or she became upset with you. Talking while she was teaching meant getting your mouth taped shut with white tape. I never experienced the tape but many in my class did.
A FINNS outtake by the author:
Here's a 1997 account from my sister Marjorie (Marge) A. Kangas (1953-2023), whom I also interviewed for the FINNS oral history thesis. I didn't have time to include every interview in the thesis because in the spring of 1997 I was on academic deadline (I had to meet it or not graduate.) But readers might find occasional outtake interviews to be interesting.
The setting:
Marge’s calico cat Beans sits on a chair at her owner's kitchen table, eyes the whirring tape recorder, and—whiskers twitching—watches the interview. Marge has always been an animal lover and has cared for a succession of cats and dogs whether she resided in Arizona, California, Pennsylvania, or back home in New Hampshire. The interview took place at her apartment in Peterborough, NH.
Marge speaks as follows:
My earliest awareness of being Finn was that our family went to the Independent Apostolic Lutheran song services instead of a regular church. Also, we had Apostolic Lutheran kids at school who weren’t allowed to watch films, even though the films were educational and an everyday part of the curriculum. As young children, we called the Apostolic children the ‘Sin Kids’ because sin was their chief topic of conversation when talking to others who didn’t belong to their church.
And even though we belonged to a church that had the same origins as theirs, and even though we were cousins to many of the Apostolics through the Somero side of our family, the Sin Kids didn’t accept us as Finns. When we returned to school in September with a little bit of chipped nail polish left on our fingertips from the annual [New Ipswich] Children’s Fair, the Sin Kids said we were going to hell. If you curled your hair, you were going to hell; or watched TV, you were going to hell; or listened to Rock and Roll [music], you were going to hell. Anything like that.
At the Independent Apostolic Lutheran song services, the older folks would sit in a circle and a preacher who had arrived from Michigan or Minnesota would preach a sermon in Finn, then English. Usually the preacher was Matt Reed. I heard stories about Matt—he was hunting with a friend and a grizzly bear killed his friend—out in Minnesota, I think.
Then they’d sing English or Finnish hymns. Our mother’s aunt would rejoice and get up from her chair, clapping her hands, and she terrified me. Some of these Finn tunes that we were singing would get pretty lively and that’s when she’d get up and shout and dance.
I’d say to my mother, “Why is Auntie doing that?”
And my mother would say, “Oh, she’s happy because she knows she’s going to go to heaven.”
This usually happened just before refreshments. My mother’s aunt would then hug all the kids within reach. I think she just got high—high on religion. And at the time I thought it was embarrassing—I was worried about her hugging me. My mother and father never danced, so to see someone else doing it was totally foreign—we just weren’t used to these open displays of emotion. Also, dancing was one thing the Sin Kids had said would send you to hell.
However, I thought attending song services far better than having to go to a regular church because you got to eat, for one thing. You got to run around with the other kids until you were exhausted. We’d get all hot and sweaty outside and then come into the kitchen and have tuna-fish sandwiches. And, of course, there was coffee. To this day, whenever I smell coffee brewing, it smells like tuna-fish sandwiches to me. When I took a psychology course in college, they told me I had a food fixation because I was always drawing pictures of sandwiches.
Some Finns held church services in the Central School building for a while. The first time I ever went to these services was with my mother. When they came around with the collection plate, I grabbed a 50-cent piece. My mother slapped me and I put it back. I honestly did not know what the collection plate was for.
But soon after that, we started going to Our Redeemer Chapel [Missouri Synod Lutheran]. There, everything was church: Vacation Bible School, Sunday School, Luther League. Assemble Horns of Plenty, go Christmas caroling, Ladies’ Guild. Easter—being dragged out at the crack of dawn or even before that to go to a sunrise service. Plus we had to sing at these sunrise services.
One of the unspoken rules was that you don’t go into church smiling—don’t let anyone think you’re enjoying this. Our mother always played the role of self-appointed church truant officer. I don’t know how she managed to take all this stuff in—she’d be looking at what so-and so’s doing and notice that so-and-so didn’t make it to church this Sunday or so-and-so’s biting their nails.
I considered Sunday School very depressing because it was always about Christ being whipped and put to death. Sometimes I thought the pastor was Jesus—it seemed he took it all so personally. In the Bible, it seemed to me that Christ sometimes gave people some very short answers—it sounded like He’d cut someone off.
In Sunday School, the instructors were talking about this wonderful, loving man, but sometimes He just seemed to say, “Aaaah—go get some sleep or something.”
I brought this to the pastor’s attention and he had to think about that one—it was the first time he didn’t have an answer ready.
Many long hours of sitting in the Missouri Synod Lutheran church taught me how to daydream because, after Sunday School, we ran upstairs to the sterile pews for another hour of services. We’d have to get up and sing—we didn’t memorize Hail Mary’s but we had Glory Be’s and other things to say over and over.
And then we’d finally get to sit down for the sermon. I’d look at the flies—they’d roll over on the floor and kick their legs. I’d practically be in outer space by the time the sermon stopped. Naturally kids are going to think of something entertaining because they can’t tolerate the boredom of sitting still.
Very interesting. I can relate a bit to it in some ways. I was taken to a Polish Catholic Church when I was young. The Mass was given in Latin, Polish and English which meant it would go on for hours. I was bored with everything but the music. My Dad sang in the choir. The church was very ornate and I loved looking at the full size angel statues holding lamps. In summer they had large fans which sounded like an airplane engine whine. Also I am definitely going to have coffee the next time I make a tuna sandwich. Thanks for this account.
I also can relate to your experience, just substitute French for Polish. We were told we would go to purgatory if we set foot in a Lutheran church. This was a venial sin. However, not attending church on Sunday was a mortal sin. Every first Friday of the month the nuns would march the class to the church next door for confession. We had to tell our sins to the priest. I had to make up sins so I'd have something to say. I wasn't sure if saying "Up your nose" to a nun in Finnish was a sin, sometimes it wasn't her nose. Was it a sin to picture what she looked like in her underwear? Was it a sin to hide the wooden ruler she used to hit your fingers. I'm left handed and for some reason it was considered the devil's hand.
Thus, I write illegibly with my right hand. After one of these finger slaps to get even (not smart) I wrote my assignment in the most microscopical print (not script) I could manage so that magnifying glass was needed to read it.
Was that the Greenville parish? I recall a number of those types of stories being related to me by the Catholic kids. I thought of the nuns must be a group of tyrants.
Yes, Greenville. Some nuns were good but many were mean. You had to pay attention to the teacher or she became upset with you. Talking while she was teaching meant getting your mouth taped shut with white tape. I never experienced the tape but many in my class did.