The History of Father’s Day

By Jim Day

Father’s Day is a holiday to celebrate fatherhood and parenting by males, just as Mother’s Day celebrates motherhood. Typically giving gifts to fathers and celebrating as a family is the main event of the day.

Father’s Day exists almost all over the world to honor and commemorate fathers or forefathers and is celebrated at differing times throughout the year. In the Roman Catholic tradition, Father’s Day is celebrated on Saint Joseph’s Day, though in most countries Father’s Day is a secular celebration.

In the United States, the driving force behind the establishment of the celebration of Father’s Day was Mrs. Sonora Smart Dodd. Her father, the Civil War veteran William Jackson Smart, as a single parent raised 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, the anniversary of her father’s death, she did not provide the organizers with enough time to make arrangements, and the celebration was deferred to the third Sunday in June. The first Father’s Day was celebrated on June 19, 1910, in Spokane. It should be noted that Fairmont, West Virginia, not far from Anna Jarvis’s home town of Grafton, claims to have held the first official remembrance two years earlier at Williams Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church on July 5, 1908.

Unofficial support from such figures as William Jennings Bryan was immediate and widespread. In 1924, Calvin Coolidge recommended it as a national holiday, but it wasn’t until 1966 that Lyndon Johnson made Father’s Day a holiday to be celebrated on the third Sunday of June. The holiday wasn’t officially recognized until the presidency of Richard Nixon in 1972.

Our earthly fathers should of course be honored as we are commanded to do so by Scripture. But, more importantly, we need to praise and honor God our Heavenly Father every waking moment of every day.