The story of Father’s Day is an interesting one. Some say it is little
more than a fake holiday, designed by card shops to fill a summer lull
in holidays and separate punters from their cash, but that couldn’t be
further from the truth (it’s also not true for Valentine’s Day, the
holiday most commonly accused of this – look it up).
Father’s Day got its start in 1909 Washington, when Sonora Smart Dodd
was listening to a sermon about Mother’s Day, which had just been
created two years ago. Mother’s Day was started by a woman named Anna
Jarvis, because she wanted to honour her own mother, and she quickly
found official support to get it made into a holiday. Sonora, however,
had no mother – her father was a single parent who raised her and five
other children single-handedly. She thought fathers should have a day
too, and the story of Mother’s Day inspired her to try to start one.
The idea quickly caught on, through press coverage and word of mouth,
and by the ‘20s thousands of people celebrated it, including
then-President Woodrow Wilson. It was controversial at first, as many
thought it would be seen as an attempt by men to get their own Mother’s
Day and diminish the contributions of women, but eventually common sense
won out and the day was added to the calendar.
The tradition rapidly spread around the world to countries that didn’t
already have a day for fathers – today, most of the world’s countries
celebrate it in some form. Many places, including America and the UK,
celebrate Father’s Day on the third Sunday in June, but some countries
use other dates. Today, Father’s Day is the fifth-largest holiday when
it comes to the number of cards sent each year, coming in after
Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day.
