A daughter in a church pew
In 1909, a young woman called Sonora Smart Dodd sat listening to a Mother's Day sermon at her church in Spokane, Washington, and thought about her own FATHER. William Smart, a farmer who had fought in the American Civil War, had brought up Sonora and her five brothers alone after their mother died in childbirth. Sonora asked local churches to set aside a Sunday to honour fathers, and the first Father's Day was held in Spokane on 19 June 1910.
A year and a half earlier, in July 1908, a church in Fairmont, West Virginia, had held a service to remember the 361 men killed in a coal mine explosion at nearby Monongah the previous December, many of them fathers. It was organised by Grace Golden Clayton, whose own father had died, and it is sometimes called the first Father's Day, although it was not repeated.
Sixty years to become official
Mother's Day became an American national day in 1914, but Father's Day took far longer. Many men thought a day of flowers and cards was sentimental, and some joked that it was just a way to sell more neckties. Presidents supported it from time to time, but it was only in 1972 that President Richard Nixon signed a law making the third Sunday in June a permanent national holiday. Sonora Dodd lived to see it, dying in 1978 at the age of ninety-six.
She had also suggested a flower for the day: a red rose to wear for a living father, and a white one for a father who had died.
The tie that came from Croatia
The TIE, the most joked-about Father's Day GIFT, has a surprising history. In the 1600s, Croatian soldiers fighting for France wore colourful knotted cloths around their necks. Fashionable Parisians copied them and called the style a cravat, from the French word for a Croat. It slowly shrank over the centuries into the modern NECKTIE.
Other favourites are a WATCH, a WALLET, TOOLS for the WORKSHOP, new SLIPPERS or a day out FISHING or CAMPING. In the animal world some fathers do even more of the work: our sea animals page covers the fish in which the father gives birth.
Father's Day around the world
Not every country follows the June date. In Spain, Italy and Portugal, Father's Day falls on 19 March, the feast of Saint Joseph, the husband of Mary. In Thailand it is celebrated on 5 December, the birthday of the late King Bhumibol, who was seen as the father of the nation, and people wear yellow. In Germany, Father's Day falls on Ascension Day in spring, and groups of friends go on long walks pulling handcarts loaded with food and drink. Australia and New Zealand celebrate on the first Sunday in September, when it is spring there, and Britain took up the American June date after the Second World War.
Whatever the date, the day usually means a CARD, HUGS, a COOKOUT on the GRILL, time in the GARDEN with FAMILY, and telling DAD, or PAPA, that he is a HERO and that everyone is PROUD and THANKFUL.