A look at Marian Days. (Courtesy of The Carthage Press)

Most days, Carthage is home to some 14,000 people. But Marian Days, an annual religious festival for Vietnamese Catholics, isn’t most days.

During the days and decades-long event, the town explodes with nearly 100,000 people — and soon, even more will “visit” the annual event through their televisions.

On May 2 and 5, Ozarks Public Television (OPT) is set to air “Marian Days: A Spiritual and Cultural Homecoming.” The station-created documentary highlights the story behind the religious festival, which ties to Vietnamese refugees who relocated to the Ozarks in the 1970s.

The project is part of OPT’s ongoing effort to give an intensive look at various topics throughout the Ozarks.

“Ozarks Public Television concentrates a focus, a priority, on producing local history documentaries that highlight … many significant aspects of our history,” says Tom Carter, product and promotion manager at OPT. “They’re very extensive, and take quite a number of people (to create).”

The station strives to produce two such documentary projects annually, and the topics come from a variety of sources. For example, Carter says the idea for the Marian Days project came from someone with whom he attends church.

“Probably like a lot of people, I’d heard of Marian Days and had a broad sense of what it was, but not the origin, scope and meaning of it,” he says.

That soon changed as he explored the project — and as he learned, he wanted to share.

“I wanted to tell a good story, and I wanted to tell it in a good way,” he says.

The festival began in the late 1970s. In 1975, 170 priests and religious brothers came to the United States after fleeing Vietnam in fishing boats a day before South Vietnam fell to Communism.

They were eventually relocated to Carthage — and the site of a religious institution — by the late Cardinal Bernard Law, who at the time was bishop of the Springfield-Cape Girardeau Diocese. Today, that institution is known as The Congregation of the Mother of the Redeemer.

The festival began shortly thereafter as a way to give thanks, and to connect with other refugees.

“It’s a faith experience — they come to pray,” said Law, to a Sunday News and Leader reporter, in 1982. “Most of them are praying for someone still in Vietnam — a mother, a father, a son. It’s a very touching thing.”

The festival quickly grew in number and notoriety. More than 6,000 were reported to have attended in 1981. The next year, more than 8,000. A decade after its start, there were 30,000.

Those figures have only grown over festival’s approximately 40 years. In 2018, the figure was more than 100,000 people — around seven times larger than Carthage’s population.

The town of Carthage has learned to expand to accommodate its visitors, Carter says, and even embrace the chance to make new relationships.

“There are many Carthage residents who sort of open up their homes,” he says. “They let (visitors) camp in their yard. They stay in their homes and they eat with them.

“It’s their opportunity to get together with friends and family.”

Similar stories will be told through the documentary, which Carter also says participants were happy to share.

“They explained many times this is something they always wanted to do — to tell their story.”

Want to watch?

“Marian Days: A Spiritual and Cultural Homecoming” is set to air on Thursday, May 2, at 8 p.m., and Sunday, May 5, at 3 p.m. on OPT. For more info, click here.

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Resources

“8,000 Vietnamese meet to pray for homeland,” Kevin Madden, Sunday News and Leader, Aug. 15, 1982

“America, Vietnam Marian Days,” Yung Hwang, Springfield News-Leader, Aug. 24, 2016

“Joined in faith and fellowship,” Linda Leicht, Springfield News-Leader, Aug. 5, 2005

“Thousands flock to Carthage for Vietnamese Catholic festival,” Springfield News-Leader, Aug. 3, 2018

“Vietnamese Catholics on Ozarks pilgrimage,” John Rivera, The Baltimore Sun, Aug. 10, 1998

“Vietnamese celebrate Marian Days,” The Catholic Advance, June 25, 1981