Father’s Day
Just like Mother’s Day celebrates mothers, Father’s Day celebrates fathers and all the things they do for their families. Many countries celebrate Father’s Day, and it began in the United States in the early twentieth century.
The first Father’s Day celebration took place in Fairmont, West Virginia on July 5, 1908. A woman named Grace Golden Clayton organized it as a way to remember 210 miners killed in the Monongah Mining disaster a few months earlier. The celebration was held at the First Father’s Day Church, now called the Central United Methodist Church, which is still in Fairmont today. However, another woman, Sonora Smart Dodd, who lived in Spokane, Washington, is credited with really getting the holiday off the ground. She listened to a Mother’s Day sermon in Spokane, and thought that fathers should be equally recognized for their efforts. She spoke with her pastor and she took it to the local YWCA, who, along with local church groups, endorsed it and urged the nation to celebrate the day in 1910. Sonora wanted the day to fall on June 5, her own father’s birthday, but the churches wanted more time to prepare, so they chose June 19, 1910 to promote the holiday. Even though the churches and the YWCA supported the holiday, it failed to become a recognized holiday until 1966, when President Lyndon Johnson proclaimed the third Sunday in June as Father’s Day. It permanently became a holiday in 1972 when President Nixon signed it into law.
The Commercialization of Father’s Day
Many people believe it took so long for Father’s Day to become permanent because of the over-commercialization of the holiday. Many people were critical of the holiday’s gift giving aspect, although it has never become as heavily commercialized as Mother’s Day. Not as many greeting cards are sold for Father’s Day, but it is the heaviest day in the country for collect calls. Unlike the founder of Mother’s Day, Anna Jarvis, Dodd never worried about the commercialization of the holiday. She used the gift-giving to promote the holiday, and urged local businesspeople to promote it to their customers. Today, some of the most popular gifts for fathers include electronics and sports-themed items, and schoolchildren often create Father’s Day gifts in the classroom before the holiday.