Those Winter Sundays

“Those Winter Sundays” is a lament for something lost that wasn’t appreciated in the moment. The speaker regretfully describes his father’s silent sacrifice and love. The regret and feeling of loss appear in the description of the scene and in the morose tone.

This lamentation starts with the title. The use of “Those” suggests this scene was a constant in the speaker’s childhood. He is not remembering a single Sunday morning; he is remembering his childhood as a whole, which he defines by two things: his father’s love and his own lack of appreciation for that love. The father shows love through action (building the fire, polishing shoes, working for the family), while lines like “[n]o one ever thanked him” (Line 5) and “I would rise and dress / fearing the chronic angers of that house // Speaking indifferently to him” (Lines 8-10), show the speaker's lack of appreciation.

The speaker regrets this treatment of his father. He admits his regret in the final stanza when he cries, “[w]hat did I know, what did I know / of love’s austere and lonely offices?” (Lines 13-14). The repetition of “what did I know” illustrates the speaker’s pain. It is as if he’s choking up while writing this. Repeating the phrase amplifies not only the words, but the feeling invoked by the words. In this case, the words seem to invoke a feeling of guilt.

The final line delivers a gut punch to both the reader and the speaker as the speaker describes love as a role one must play. The word “offices” (Line 14) does not refer to an office building; it refers to a position of authority and service. It is the status the father held throughout life. This is a use of the word which aligns with the formality of “austere” (Line 14). “Austere” means severe or stern, but the connotation here isn’t necessarily bad. Combined with “offices,” the line suggests a sense of mature respect and understanding about a parent’s love that the speaker did not have when he was a child.

The respect and wisdom in the final line contrast the childlike repetition and lament of the penultimate line, creating an ending that strikes a balance between love and regret.

There are many ways a reader could absorb this poem. While it is tempting to view it as simply a comment on love and regret, Hayden is doing many other things to add depth and complexity to the poem’s message.

For example, the poem oozes with religious imagery. There is the image of a son who does not understand his father’s love and sacrifice until it is too late, alluding to the plight of those who condemned Christ before his crucifixion only to realize his divinity in death. The father fills the role of silent protector who drives out the cold with fire. The fire is warm and bright, and the father builds it with “cracked hands” (Line 3). Writers have traditionally used fire as a metaphor for divine action—from Moses seeing the burning bush where God speaks to him, to the “tongues of fire” describing the Holy Spirit in the New Testament.

Beyond Christian mythology, Greek mythology describes Prometheus as a father-like figure who brings fire to humans, thus providing them with life and prosperity. This is a selfless act that results in Zeus punishing Prometheus with pain and suffering. This myth matches the father in the poem as he silently and thanklessly performs his duties through the pains of labor.

The title is another religious allusion. The poem is about Sundays when the family wakes up early and polishes their good shoes, suggesting they are preparing to go somewhere dressed up. The implication here is that the family is preparing for church. The father performs his parental duty with the thankless devotion of a pious worshipper. His actions are selfless, and he is not concerned with thanks or praise. He is Christlike in this way, and only after it is too late does the speaker understand this.

Considering these things as well as Hayden’s Christian upbringing and his other poetry about religion, a religious interpretation of this poem fits.

Finally, to properly analyze this poem, it is important to briefly consider the poem’s social and historical context (though the following section will expand on this). Poetry—and all art—is always connected to the context of the poet’s life and experiences, as well as the context of the society in which the poet lived. While Hayden writes the poem without specific reference to economic status, the poem certainly has an economic perspective, demonstrated in lines like “with cracked hands that ached / from labor in the weekday weather” (Lines 3-4) and “Sundays too my father got up early” (Line 1). The word “too” is doing a lot of work in Line 1 because it suggests the father wakes early every day to work. It is also important to remember that the poet who wrote these lines grew up in a poor neighborhood during the Great Depression. Readers can use the lens of economics to view the almost religious appreciation for the father’s sacrifice and love. While the poem doesn’t glorify poverty, it deifies those who experience it. The message is that love is more powerful than the tangible suffering of the poor. This message aligns with the poem’s religious imagery, as Christianity values love over wealth.

At the end of the poem, the speaker embraces this ideology. For the speaker, the father’s love survives in his memory; the speaker’s guilt for how he treated his father inspires an epiphany about how he should act and love in his own life. He remembers his father’s love, and realizes he was foolish for not appreciating it. This epiphany, while sad, is instructive. It teaches the reader a lesson of empathy and care, ultimately providing a positive, uplifting message of hope and love.

In describing Hayden’s poetry, William H. Hansell summarizes this message best:

[Hayden] […] has attempted to portray all human activity as essentially a spiritual journey, often grotesquely distorted, towards sanctity. The evils in his poems are scientific rationalism, materialism, and the failure of universal love. That mankind will ultimately triumph, Hayden seems certain, and equally certain is his belief that the preparatory trials will be harsh and prolonged (Hansell, William H. “The Spiritual Unity of Robert Hayden’s Angle of Ascent.” Black American Literature Forum, vol. 13, no. 1, spring 1979, p. 24. JSTOR.)