UUFSMA: “Día Del Niño”

By Joseph Plummer

UUF Secretary

A celebration fairly recognized for having many fathers, World Children’s Day, known as Día Del Niño in Mexico and observed on April 30, provides the focus for Guest Speaker Nory Contractor, Executive Director of Patronato Pro Niños, during this Sunday’s UUFSMA Online Service.

Recognition of the social, moral, and ethical rights of the youngest, most vulnerable humans occurred at least as far back as the June 1857 celebration of Children’s Rose Day by Reverend Charles Leonard, a Universalist pastor in Massachusetts. Halfway around the world six decades later in 1920, after the horrors for children in World War One, Kamal Ataturk’s progressive Republic of Turkey declared April 23 to be Children’s Day. In the same era, Mexicans first celebrated Children’s Day in Tantoyuca, Veracruz on May 8.