Over the Hill

Today daughter no. 3 turned 50! So now she can officially join the Red Hat Society.
The founder of the society is Fullerton, California artist Sue Ellen Cooper, who in 1998 gave a friend a 55th birthday gift consisting of a red fedora she had bought a year earlier at a thrift store along with a copy of Jenny Joseph's poem:

Warning

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.

And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves

And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.

I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired

And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells

And run my stick along the public railings

And make up for the sobriety of my youth.

I shall go out in my slippers in the rain

And pick flowers in other people's gardens

And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat

And eat three pounds of sausages at a go

Or only bread and pickle for a week

And hoard pens and pencils and beer mats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry

And pay our rent and not swear in the street

And set a good example for the children.

We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?

So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised

When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

Jenny Joseph

Cooper repeated the gift on request several times, and eventually the group all bought purple outfits and held a tea party.
At first spreading by word of mouth, the Society received national publicity in 2000 through the magazine Romantic Homes and a feature in the Orange County Register that ran nationally. Cooper then established a "Hatquarters" to field the hundreds of e-mail requests for help starting chapters. She now serves as "Exalted Queen Mother", and has written two best-selling books about the Society.

Dutch Tradition when turning 50:
On your 50th birthday you are called Sarah or Abraham (depending on your sex)
When somebody turns 50 there is a saying that they have seen Abraham or Sarah. If it’s a man who turns 50 they say he has seen Abraham and when it’s a woman they say she has seen Sarah. To celebrate the 50th birthday of a person family members decorate the front yard of the house of this person as a surprise and put an Abraham or Sarah doll in their front yard. These dolls mostly represent something that the person in that specific case does. Like when somebody is a carpenter they dress up the Abraham doll as a carpenter.
The Sarah and Abraham tradition comes from the bible. Jesus said that he had seen Abraham. But that wasn’t possible because Abraham had already died. So then somebody asked him that if he wasn’t even 50 years old how could he have seen Abraham? So now Elaine is 50, old enough to have seen Sarah.