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© 2003 Smith College. All rights reserved.
As an institution Smith College has many traditions, some with history since its inception. One of the earliest special days celebrated at Smith College was Ivy Day. Still celebrated, Ivy Day is a day in which departing seniors plant ivy cuts on the Smith grounds, symbolizing their seed of knowledge, in hopes that it will flourish. Today, cuts are taken from vines around campus and given to first-year students in anticipation of their own Ivy Day celebration.
Many of those traditions include Special Day celebrations for students, staff, faculty, and parents. Included in the Special Days boxes are the Father's Day folders containing programs, POPS! concert programs, photographs, letters, and newspaper clippings. The change from Father's Weekend to Parent's Weekend and then Family Weekend is documented with the information contained in these folders.
Halloween, Thanksgiving, Easter, Float Night are special days included within the folders. And the repertoire of special days continues to grow as Smith College adds new special day traditions to its old ones: Celebration of Sisterhood and Otelia Cromwell Day. Each celebration seeks to acknowledge and diversify, celebrating what is present and what is to come. Smith College, having a history of celebrating, embracing, renewing and creating traditions, will carry several of them into the future and create several more.
The degree to which folders contain information varies. For some special days the only recognition of its existence is the presence of the folders, perhaps containing as little as a single photograph or a single event program. In such case, the Sophian may be a good place to look for further information.
However, other folders contain records of the special day's beginnings on campus. The Valentine's Day and Thanksgiving Day folders contain information about past celebrations with newspaper clippings and reports, photographs, and memorabilia. In general, information for present day special day celebrations is not as complete as those of earlier celebratory years. For instance, though the Celebration of Sisterhood still takes place, the documents contain information for only 2 years. Similarly, Float Night is a continued Tradition that is documented for only 2 individual years. Additional files on Float Night are available in 80. Athletics Records.
The folders are arranged alphabetically. Two special days, Christmas and Mountain Day have their own boxes. These have separate finding aids.
The records are open to public research according to the regulations of the Smith College Archives.
Single photocopies may be made for research purposes. Permission to publish or quote from the documents must be obtained from the Smith College Archives.
Please use the following format when citing materials from this collection:
Special Days A-Z Files, Box #, Smith College Archives.
The Special Days files were collected over time by the Smith College Archives.
Processed by Christine Merrill.