Ribbons have held an important place in Western Christendom.
In old times, when men travelled, their wives/beloveds tied ribbons in the hair to indicate they remembered someone and were not available for courtship.
Because the journeys were usually long, this was a way of expressing faithfulness.
Since many men in those days travelled to fight wars, the belief eventually expanded and, along with faithfulness, also began to mean a prayer for their safe return.
There is this 400-year old song ‘round her neck she wore a yellow ribbon‘that covers the faithfulness and the tension the beloved feels for her lover being away fighting enemies.
Some say this song started the tradition of ribbons, while others say it captured those days’ prevalent practice.
Many variants of this song have been written in the last 400 years, but ‘yellow’ more or less has been retained.
Then came another song in 1973 (during the Vietnam war) about the homecoming of someone who had suffered a lot at faraway places.
Then in 1979, a group of militarised Iranian college students took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and seized 52 hostages.
One of these hostages was a high-ranking officer Bruce Laingen.
His wife, Penne Laingen, inspired by the 1973 song, suggested tying yellow ribbons on the trees nearby (within weeks, yellow ribbons were everywhere).
Then in 1991, when the U.S. soldiers went to fight the Gulf War, yellow ribbons made a comeback.
Around the same time, an AIDS activist group came up with the idea of red ribbons.
The idea was: “We are thinking about those fighting in Iraq… what about those who are dying (of AIDS) at home?”
With the same thought about women battling breast cancer, Charlotte Haley, who had herself fought cancer (and lost her grandma and daughter to the disease), started handing out peach-coloured ribbons and postcards at supermarkets.
The postcards, meant to create awareness and incite action from the decision-makers, read: “The National Cancer Institute annual budget is $1.8 billion, only 5 per cent goes to cancer prevention. Help us wake up our legislators and America by wearing this ribbon.”
As the word spread, executives from Estée Lauder and Self Magazine asked Haley for permission to use her ribbon.
Haley refused, saying that the companies were trying to make the social cause commercial.
Self magazine consulted its lawyers and was advised to come up with another colour—pink.
There were so many ribbons associated with social causes in this period that The New York Times declared 1992 ‘The Year of the Ribbon’.
