We bet you didn’t know this, but were it not for Mother’s Day, there may not be a Father’s Day. That’s right. Its history goes back to 1909, when Sonora Smart Dodd, a woman who, with five other siblings, was raised by a single father, decided that dads should be honored too. Mother’s Day had been established in the 1860s.
Sonora Smart Dodd
She petitioned her local government in Spokane, Wash. for a year, and the first official Father’s Day was celebrated on June 19, 1910. The celebration spread from state to state. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge urged state governments to observe Father’s Day. But it wasn’t until 1972 that Father’s Day was declared a national holiday when President Richard Nixon signed it into law.
Like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day has no set date. Instead, it always falls on the third Sunday in June (which this year is June 18), least in the U.S. and Europe. In Latin America, fathers are celebrated on St. Joseph’s Day, which falls on March 19, while in Australia, New Zealand and Fiji, Father’s Day falls on the first Sunday in September.
Although commercialized today, dads didn’t always want to be recognized. American historian Timothy Marr wrote that men “scoffed at the holiday’s sentimental attempts to domesticate manliness with flowers and gift-giving.”
For the most part, ties, socks and a variety of tools have replaced that sentiment with Father’s Day spending estimated at about $20 billion, according to the National Retail Federation.