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| President Obama with his children |
President Barack Obama says his wife told him
to stop calling Father's Day a "forgotten holiday." The
President had voiced the opinion that Mother's Day is more of a celebration than
Father’s Day. However, Michelle Obama told him Mother's Day should be a bigger celebration
because "every day is Father's Day" adding he is "always getting
a treat."
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| President Obama with Michelle Obama |
As Nicholas K. Geranios points out, in the 102 years since Father’s Day began being celebrated fatherhood
has changed. He states that, according to the U.S. Census
Bureau, in 2010 15 percent of single parents were men and there were 158,000
stay-at-home dads. The Census Bureau also said various reports showed that fathers
were good about reading to their children, praising them at least three times a
day and taking them on outings.
In addition,
according to Ruki Sayid in The Mirror, Dads spend a
lot of their time giving their children lifts and collecting them from sports
activities and hobbies. Research shows dads spend nearly an hour and a half
each week waiting in cars, which equates to 22 days of their lives just hanging
around. The survey, conducted for Sainsbury’s Bank, revealed that the drives
allowed parents to spend quality time chatting to their children in the car.
However, Michael Gurian noted that 90 percent of
homeless and runaway children, 71 percent of high school dropouts and 63
percent of young people who commit suicide came from fatherless homes. He is
quoted as saying "Without fathers you would have no civilization.....If we
don't protect fathering, we are going to really be messed up."
So where did Father’s Day
start? Some people cite the a church sermon made in West
Virginia, USA in 1908 in memory of 362 men killed in
explosions at the Fairmont Coal Company mines. However, this was intended as a commemoration,
not an annual holiday.
Credit for the annual celebration is
more usually attributed to
Mrs. Sonora Smart Dodd. She was married to
John Bruce Dodd, one of the original founders of Ball & Dodd Funeral Home.
They had a son, Jack Dodd, born in 1909.
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| Mrs. Sonora Smart Dodd |
Mrs. Dodd’s mother had died during childbirth, leaving her father,
William Jackson Smart, to raise his five sons and daughter on his own. In 1910, she attended a Mother’s Day church
service and decided that her father had made just as much effort in raising the
family as mothers did. She decided his efforts should be honoured in the same
way – with a special day. Approaching the Spokane Ministerial Association and the local YMCA, Mrs Dodd’s
asked them to support her proposal. Originally intended to take place on her father’s
birthday, the celebration had to be postponed until the third Sunday of June.
The first Fathers day celebration took place on 19th June 1910 in Spokane.
Father’s Day did not receive an immediate support. However, Newspapers
picked up the story and spread it across the country. Mrs. Dodd’s campaign
gained recognition from political leader William Jennings Bryan, who complimented her on her idea adding “too much emphasis cannot be
placed upon the relation between parent and child."
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| President Woodrow Wilson |
Attempts
were made to make Father’s Day an official holiday by introducing a bill to Congress
in 1913. It was approved by US President Woodrow Wilson, who went to Spokane to celebrate Father's Day in 1916.
However, Congress worried
that the new holiday would be too commercialized and so defeated two attempts
to formally recognize the holiday. However, stopping short of issuing a
national proclamation, in 1924 US President Calvin Coolidge
recommended that the day be observed by the nation. He suggested that states
should hold their own Father’s Day observances. His formal proclamation designated
the third Sunday in June as Father’s Day to “establish more intimate relations between fathers and their children
and to impress upon fathers the full measure of their obligations.”
Following an
accusation by Senator Margaret Chase Smith that Congress had been ignoring
fathers for 40 years, in 1956/7 a Joint Resolution of Congress finally gave
recognition to Father’s Day. In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the
first presidential proclamation honoring fathers, designating the third Sunday
in June as Father’s Day. In 1972, President Richard Nixon made it a permanent
national holiday by law.
The idea of celebrating
Fathers day spread to the UK from America. However, it did not take off until
the 1970’s, when the idea of equal rights was at the forefront of consciousness.
So wish your dad a Happy Father's Day tomorrow and show he is not forgotten!
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Had we been in the area earlier we would have seen
the notices about road closures on Sunday 17th June 2012 allowing revellers to hand-pull
three 40-foot high colourful chariots along the streets.
