By Marian Edelbrock, PhD, San Digo Miramar College
Father’s Day dates back to the middle ages when on March 19 it was celebrated as the feast day of Saint Joseph. It is celebrated worldwide on various dates but in Latin America was adopted from the March date celebrated by the founding Spanish and Portuguese explorers. However, it was not celebrated in the United States until the 20th Century.
In the US, Father’s Day, which we will be celebrating this Sunday, originally evolved as a memorial. Back in 1907, Grace Clayton proposed a day in remembrance of 360 men lost in a mine explosion in Fairmont, West Virginia, which left many children fatherless. In 1909, a year after Mother’s Day became officially accepted, Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, Washington, was listening to a Mother’s Day sermon at her church. She admired her father for raising his six children alone so she decided she wanted to honor her father and all others in a similar way. She promoted her idea to local clergymen who agreed that a day would be chosen to honor all fathers and on June 19, 1910, sermons honoring fathers were presented throughout the city.
Although the event lost momentum for a decade, in the 1930s, Dodd re-promoted the celebration, with other cities across the country copying this event. Merchants encouraged the commercial aspect of the holiday, introducing a bill in Congress in 1913 to recognize Father’s Day. However, Congress resisted due to a concern for the risk of excessive commercialism. In 1924, President Coolidge recommended that the day be observed throughout the entire nation but Congress defeated several attempts to formally recognize the holiday. In 1966, President Johnson issued the first presidential proclamation honoring fathers and designated the third Sunday in June as Father’s Day. The day became a permanent national holiday when it was signed into law by President Nixon in 1972, formally recognizing the role that fathers have played in our lives.