Every Dad has his day…at least once a year

FATHER’S Day was inaugurated in the United States in the early 20th century to complement Mother’s Day in celebrating fatherhood and male parenting.

After the success obtained by Anna Jarvis with the promotion of Mother’s Day in the US, some wanted to create similar holidays for other family members, and Father’s Day was the choice most likely to succeed.

Father’s Day was founded in Spokane, Washington in 1910 by Sonora Smart Dodd, who was born in Arkansas. Its first celebration was in the Spokane YMCA on June 19, 1910. Her father, Civil War veteran William Jackson Smart, was a single parent who raised his six children there. After hearing a sermon about Ms Jarvis’s Mother’s Day in 1909, she told her pastor that fathers should have a similar holiday honouring them. Although she initially suggested June 5, her father’s birthday, the pastors did not have enough time to prepare their sermons and the celebration was deferred to the third Sunday of June.

It did not have much success initially. In the 1930s Ms Dodd started promoting the celebration again, raising awareness at a national level. She had the help of those trade groups that would benefit most from the holiday, for example the manufacturers of ties, tobacco pipes and any traditional present to fathers. From 1938 she had the help of the Father’s Day Council, founded by the New York Associated Men’s Wear Retailers to consolidate the commercial promotion.

Americans resisted the holiday during a few decades, perceiving it as just an attempt by merchants to replicate the commercial success of Mother’s Day but the trade groups did not give up.

A bill to accord national recognition of the holiday was introduced in Congress in 1913, but it was not until 1966 that President Lyndon B. Johnson issued the first presidential proclamation honouring fathers, designating the third Sunday in June as Father’s Day. Six years later, the day was made a permanent national holiday when President Richard Nixon signed it into law in 1972.

In addition to Father’s Day, International Men’s Day is celebrated in many countries on November 19 for men and boys who are not fathers.

(Information from Wikipedia)