Father's Day is a celebration honoring fathers and celebrating fatherhood, paternal bonds, and the influence of fathers in society. It is celebrated on the third Sunday of June in many countries and on other days elsewhere. It complements Mother's Day, the celebration honoring mothers.History
Father's Day is a celebration of fathers inaugurated in the early twentieth century to complement Mother's Day in celebrating fatherhood and male parenting. Father's Day is celebrated on a variety of dates worldwide and typically involves gift-giving, special dinners to fathers, and family-oriented activities.
On June 19, 1910, a Father's Day observance was celebrated through the efforts of Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, Washington. After listening to a church sermon at Spokane's Central Methodist Episcopal Church in 1909 about the newly recognized Mother's Day, Dodd felt strongly that fatherhood needed recognition, as well. She wanted a celebration that honored fathers like her own father, William Smart, a Civil War veteran who was left to raise his family alone when his wife died giving birth to their sixth child, when Sonora was 16 years old.
The following year with the assistance of Reverend Dr. Conrad Bluhm, her pastor at Old Centenary Presbyterian Church (now Knox Presbyterian Church), Sonora took the idea to the Spokane YMCA. The Spokane YMCA, along with the Ministerial Alliance, endorsed Dodd’s idea and helped it spread by celebrating the first Father’s Day in 1910. Sonora suggested her father’s birthday, June 5, be established as the day to honor all Fathers. However, the pastors wanted more time to prepare, so on June 19, 1910, young members of the YMCA went to church wearing roses: a red rose to honor a living father, and a white rose to honor a deceased one. Dodd traveled through the city in a horse-drawn carriage, carrying gifts to shut-in fathers confined indoors by illness.
It took many years to make the holiday official. In spite of support from the YWCA, the YMCA, and churches, Father's Day ran the risk of disappearing from the calendar. Where Mother's Day was met with enthusiasm, Father's Day was often met with laughter. The holiday was gathering attention slowly, but for the wrong reasons. It was the target of much satire, parody and derision, including jokes from the local newspaper Spokesman-Review. Many people saw it as the first step in filling the calendar with mindless promotions.
A bill to accord national recognition of the holiday was introduced in Congress in 1913. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson went to Spokane to speak in a Father's Day celebration and wanted to make it official, but Congress resisted, fearing that it would become commercialized. US President Calvin Coolidge recommended in 1924 that the day be observed by the nation, but stopped short of issuing a national proclamation. Two earlier attempts to formally recognize the holiday had been defeated by Congress. In 1957, Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith wrote a proposal accusing Congress of ignoring fathers for 40 years while honoring mothers, thus "[singling] out just one of our two parents" In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson issued the first presidential proclamation honoring 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 2010, the Father's Day Centennial Celebration occurred in Spokane with a month of events commemorating the day.
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.
First observance
Contrary to popular belief, the first observance of Father's Day actually took place in Fairmont, West Virginia on July 5, 1908. It was organized by Mrs. Grace Golden Clayton, who wanted to celebrate the lives of the 210 fathers who had been lost in the Monongah Mining disaster several months earlier in Monongah, West Virginia, on December 6, 1907. It's possible that Clayton was influenced by the first celebration of Mother's Day that same year, just a few miles away. Clayton chose the Sunday nearest to the birthday of her recently deceased father.
Unfortunately, the day was overshadowed by other events in the city, West Virginia did not officially register the holiday, and it was not celebrated again. All the credit for Father's Day went to Sonora Dodd, who invented independently her own celebration of Father's Day just two years later, also influenced by Jarvis' Mother's Day.
Clayton's celebration was forgotten until 1972, when one of the attendants to the celebration saw Nixon's proclamation of Father's Day, and worked to recover its legacy. The celebration is now held every year in the Central United Methodist Church — the Williams Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was torn down in 1922. Fairmont is now promoted as the "Home of the First Father's Day Service".
Commercialization
The Associated Men's Wear Retailers formed a National Father's Day Committee in New York City in the 1930s, which was renamed in 1938 to National Council for the Promotion of Father's Day and incorporated several other trade groups. This council had the goals of legitimizing the holiday in the mind of the people and managing the holiday as a commercial event in a more systematic way, in order to boost the sales during the holiday. This council always had the support of Dodd, who had no problem with the commercialization of the holiday and endorsed several promotions to increase the amount of gifts. In this aspect she can be considered the opposite of Anna Jarvis, who actively opposed all commercialization of Mother's Day.
The merchants recognized the tendency to parody and satirize the holiday, and used it to their benefit by mocking the holiday on the same advertisements where they promoted the gifts for fathers. People felt compelled to buy gifts even though they saw through the commercial façade, and the custom of giving gifts on that day became progressively more accepted. By 1937 the Father's Day Council calculated that only one father in six had received a present on that day. However, by the 1980s, the Council proclaimed that they had achieved their goal: the one-day event had become a three-week commercial event, a "second Christmas". Its executive director explained back in 1949 that, without the coordinated efforts of the Council and of the groups supporting it, the holiday would have disappeared.
Spelling
Although the name of the event is usually understood as a plural possessive (i.e. "day belonging to fathers"), which would under normal English punctuation guidelines be spelled "Fathers' Day," the most common spelling is "Father's Day," as if it were a singular possessive (i.e. "day belonging to Father"). In the United States, Dodd used the "Fathers' Day" spelling on her original petition for the holiday, but the spelling "Father's Day" was already used in 1913 when a bill was introduced to the U.S. Congress as the first attempt to establish the holiday, and it was still spelled the same way when its creator was commended in 2008 by the U.S. Congress.
Dates around the world
The officially recognized date of Father's Day varies from country to country. This section lists some significant examples, in order of date of observance.
| Gregorian calendar | |||||||||
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| Occurrence | Dates | Country | |||||||
| February 23 |
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| March 19 |
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| March 30 |
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| Second Sunday of May | May 9, 2010 |
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| May 8 |
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| Third Sunday of May | May 16, 2010 |
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| Ascension Day | May 13, 2010 |
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| First Sunday of June | Jun 6, 2010 |
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| June 5 |
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| Second Sunday of June | Jun 13, 2010 |
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| Third Sunday of June | Jun 20, 2010 |
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| June 17 |
|  Guatemala[24] | |||||||
| June 21 (before the first day of summer) |
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| June 21 (first day of summer) |
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| June 23 |
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| Second Sunday of July | Jul 11, 2010 |
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| Last Sunday of July | Jul 25, 2010 |
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| Second Sunday of August | Aug 8, 2010 |
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| August 8 |
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| First Sunday of September | Sep 5, 2010 |
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| Third Sunday of September | Sep 19, 2010 |
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| August 23 |
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| First Sunday of October | Oct 3, 2010 |
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| 12 November |
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| Second Sunday of November | Nov 14, 2010 |
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| December 5 |
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| December 26 |
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| Islam calendar | |||||||||
| Definition | Sample dates | Country/Territory | |||||||
| 13 Rajab | Jun 16, 2011 |
|  Pakistan | ||||||
*Officially, as the name suggests, the holiday celebrates people who are serving or were serving the Russian Armed Forces (both men and women). But the congratulations are traditionally, nationally accepted by all fathers, other adult men and male children as well.
**In China during Republican period prior to 1949, Father's Day on August 8 was first held in Shanghai in 1945.
In a few Catholic countries, it is celebrated on the Feast of St. Joseph.
Arab world
It's celebrated on 21 June, the first day of summer — except Lebanon, that celebrates in 20 June. This is because Mother's Day in those countries is celebrated in the first day of spring.
Argentina
Father's Day in Argentina is celebrated on the third Sunday of June, but there have been several attempts to change the date to August 24, to commemorate the day on which the "Father of the Nation" José de San Martín became a father.
In 1953 the proposal to celebrate Father's Day in all educational establishments on August 24, in honor of José de San Martín, was raised to the General Direction of Schools of Mendoza Province. The day was celebrated for the first time in 1958, on the third Sunday of June, but it was not included in the school calendars due to pressure from several groups.
Schools in the Mendoza Province continued to celebrate Father's Day on August 24, and, in 1982, the Provincial Governor passed a law declaring Father's Day in the province to be celebrated on that day.
In 2004, several proposals to change the date to August 24 were presented to the Argentine Camara de Diputados as a single, unified project. After being approved, the project was passed to the Senate of Argentina for final review and approval. The Senate changed the proposed new date to the third Sunday of August, and scheduled the project for approval. However, the project was never addressed during the Senate's planned session, which caused its ultimate failure.Germany
In Germany, Father's Day (Vatertag) is celebrated differently from other parts of the world. It is always celebrated on Ascension Day (the Thursday forty days after Easter), which is a federal holiday. Regionally, it is also called men's day, Männertag, or gentlemen's day, Herrentag. It is tradition, especially in the north and east of the country but much less so in the south and west, for groups of males (young and old but usually excluding pre-teenage boys) to do a hiking tour with one or more smaller wagons, Bollerwagen, pulled by manpower. In the wagons are wine or beer (according to region) and traditional regional food, Hausmannskost. Many men use this holiday as an opportunity to get drunk.
These traditions are probably rooted in Christian Ascension Day's processions to the farmlands, some of which reportedly took on the character of drinking sprees as early as in the 17th century. In the streets of urban regions, especially Berlin, "gentlemen parties" take place since the 19th century, excluding women and going along with alcohol consumption. However, many fathers opt to spend the day with their families instead and refrain from getting drunk. Many people will take the following Friday off at work, and some schools are closed on that Friday as well; many people then use the resulting four-day long weekend for a short vacation.
United States of AmericaIn the US, Father's Day is celebrated on the third Sunday of June. Its first celebration was in Spokane, Washington on June 19, 1910. Other festivities honoring fathers had been held in Fairmont and in Creston, but the modern holiday did not emerge from those.
Modern Father's Day was invented by Sonora Smart Dodd, born in Creston, Washington, who was also the driving force behind its establishment. Her father, the Civil War veteran William Jackson Smart, was a single parent who reared his six children in Spokane, Washington. She was inspired by Anna Jarvis's efforts to establish Mother's Day. Although she initially suggested June 5, her father's birthday, she did not provide the organizers with enough time to make arrangements, and the celebration was deferred to the third Sunday of June.
Unofficial support from such figures as William Jennings Bryan was immediate and widespread. President Woodrow Wilson was personally feted by his family in 1916. President Calvin Coolidge recommended it as a national holiday in 1924. In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson made Father's Day a holiday to be celebrated on the third Sunday of June. The holiday was not officially recognized until 1972, during the presidency of Richard Nixon.
In recent years, retailers have adapted to the holiday by promoting greeting cards and traditionally male-oriented gifts such as electronics and tools. Schools and other children's programs commonly have activities to make Father's Day gifts.
More phone calls are made in the United States during Mother's Day than during Father's Day, but the percentage of collect calls on Father's Day is much higher, making it the busiest day of the year for collect calls. Also, calls during both Mother's Day and Father's Day tend to last longer.
Father's Day is accompanied by a smaller total number of phone calls, greeting cards and gifts than Mother's Day. It is speculated that this is due to the greater number of households with a mother than households with a father (due to single mothers), to the greater role of mothers in unpaid household labor, and to different personal or societal expectations.Antecedent
The first modern celebration of a "Father's Day" was held on July 5, 1908, in Fairmont, West Virginia, in the Williams Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church South, now known as Central United Methodist Church. Clayton was mourning the loss of her father when, on December 1907, the Monongah Mining Disaster in nearby Monongah killed 361 men, 250 of them fathers, leaving around a thousand fatherless children. Clayton suggested her pastor Robert Thomas Webb to honor all those fathers. Grace Golden Clayton chose the Sunday nearest to the birthday of her father, Methodist minister Fletcher Golden.
The event did not have repercussions outside of Fairmont for several reasons, among them: the city was overwhelmed by other events, the celebration was never promoted outside of the town itself and no proclamation was made in the City Council. Also two events overshadowed this event: the celebration of Independence Day July 4, 1908, with 12,000 attendants and several shows including a hot air balloon event, which took over the headlines in the following days, and the death of a 16-year-old girl on July 4. The local church and Council were overwhelmed and they didn't even think of promoting the event, and it wasn't celebrated again for many years. The original sermon was not reproduced in press and it was lost. Finally, Clayton was a quiet person, who never promoted the event or even talked to other persons about it.
Clayton also might have been inspired by Anna Jarvis' crusade to establish Mother's Day; two months prior, Jarvis had held a celebration for her dead mother in Grafton, West Virginia, a town about 15 miles (24 km) away from Fairmont.
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