In the UK and many other parts of the world Father’s Day is celebrated on the third Sunday of June. For some countries such as Spain and Portugal Dia Do Pai was in March and for others such as Australia and New Zealand you’ll be looking forward to the first Sunday in September.
If there are numerous dates around the world for celebrating the day, then there are perhaps as many claims to the origin of the celebration too! The oldest claim appears to go back to Babylon when a son called Elmusu carved a good wishes message to his father on a clay tablet around 4,000 years ago. Where the Catholic Church is the predominate religion the day is celebrated on St Joseph’s Day in March as in Italy. For those celebrating on the third Sunday in June the origin is much more recent. For this the credit goes to Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane USA who whilst listening to a Mother’s Day sermon in March 1909 at the Central Methodist Episcopal Church hit on a complimentary day for fathers. Under this accreditation the first Father’s Day was March 19th 1910. By 1924 President Calvin Coolidge of the US had proclaimed the third Sunday in June as Father’s Day, but not until much criticism had been made of the idea of a day to celebrate fathers. There was much satire surrounding the idea and many thought it was a fruitless means to fill up the calendar with meaningless ‘days’.
The commercial possibilities of Father’s Day were promoted by the National Council for the Promotion of Father’s Day, which had many different trades as members in the US in the late 1930’s. The giving of gifts still remains and a tradition of wearing a red rose for a living father or a white one for a deceased father is still observed in some parts.
Finally, in this article the spelling used is Father’s Day as this is now the commonly recognised use. However, Dodd’s idea was for a Fathers’ Day, in other words the plural of the word to encompass all fathers. So we would like to wish all fathers, wherever and whenever you celebrate the day a happy Fathers’ Day!
