Where I got my favorite Geneva bands

The “Boy in the Bands” moniker began as a terrible double pun: a throw-away name to sign up for a site I rarely visit today. I was in a pastorate when I began this blog, and wore a collar and Geneva bands, with gown and hood in the pulpit.

I don’t wear a clerical collar often these days: I’m not in a pastorate, for one. And when I preach supply, and then visit after the service it draws too much attention. And a dress shirt and tie is more comfortable. So, I’ve gone from the kind of bands (or tabs, if you like) that you tie on and wear under a clerical collar, to the kind that you tuck in.

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Shameless selfie

Tuck in, that is, between my neck and the shirt and over the tie to hide it. Here am (left) I before assisting with communion at First Universalist Church on the Sunday of General Assembly. (Had I been preaching, I might have worn my hood, too. But the real reason is that I didn’t want to pack it. The gown was borrowed.)  It’s a comfort to only carry a couple of ounces of linen to “suit up.”

I’m writing about the bands, not to draw attention to me or them, but because a younger minister was drawn to this elegant custom, and wanted to get a set.

Alas, they’re German, ordered from Germany with the help of an expat former church member. That was about eleven year ago (and they’re still in wonderful shape.)

I got them from church textiles workshop of Diakonie Neuendettelsau. The “hohlsaum” (handworked decorative holes), made of linen. This is the one I got.

Selection_009 And when you click through, you’ll want the Reformed (Reformiert) style. The Steckbeffchen (insert-bands). I got the 17 cm long ones; then again, I’m 6-foot-4.

Selection_008Good luck after that. I don’t read German, and the site doesn’t assume Anglophones would want their product. Or non-Germans, for shipping.

I though: perhaps the Transylvanians have something similar, and their tailors could also use the work. By which I mean the Reformed Church.(Though I’ve never seen them.)  As the late Bishop Szabo, of the Transylvanian Unitarian church put it when I was kitting him out for a communion service, “we don’t wear the Moses’ tablets…”

But ministers. you might try then. Someone ought to keep tabs on you.

 

By Scott Wells

Scott Wells, 46, is a Universalist Christian minister doing Universalist theology and church administration hacks in Washington, D.C.

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