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Father’s Day is around the corner. The day is celebrated on the third Sunday in June every year. This year, the day falls on June 21.
Celebrated in 21 countries, the dates for Father’s Day are different in several countries.
There are many theories associated with the origin of the Father’s Day. According to the holidayspot, the first theory regarding the celebration of Father’s Day was established on June 19, 1908, in the State of Washington when an independent celebration of Father’s Day, a few weeks later, took place on July 5, 1908, in Fairmont, West Virginia.
Hence the first Father’s Day was recognized in West Virginia, while a church service was going on at Williams Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church South. Grace Golden Clayton, who reportedly suggested the service to the pastor at Williams Memorial, is said to have been inspired to celebrate fathers post a mine explosion, a few months before, in the nearby community of Monongah. This explosion ended 361 lives, many of them fathers and recent immigrants to the States from Italy.
The other most popular theory is that the holiday was invented by a woman who liked her dad. Sonora Smart Dodd, a woman from Spokane, WA, was inspired to create Father’s Day after listening to a Mother’s Day sermon in 1909. “Don’t you think fathers deserve a place in the sun, too?” she is said to have asked the minister. Dodd’s mother had died and she and her siblings had been raised by their father.
Dodd picked June for the celebration (the month of her dad’s birthday) and in 1910, the first Father’s Day was celebrated in Spokane. The day didn’t become official nationwide until 1972, when Nixon officially declared the third Sunday of every June Father’s Day.
It took more than 60 years from the birth of the idea to Father’s Day being recognized as a federal holiday, and a lot sure did happen at that time. According to History.com, in the 1920s and 1930s, there was a national movement to get rid of both Mother’s and Father’s Day and replace them with one “Parent’s Day.”
The celebration of Father’s Day intends to highlight the importance and challenges of fatherhood. Besides observance of Father’s Day provide children an opportunity to express love and respect for their fathers. The sentiment goes a long way in strengthening the father-child relationship and consequently in the emotional development of a child. The role of father is often relegated to a secondary status as compared to a mother. But all of us know that father is just as important for a child as the mother is. If mothers are the heroes of child-rearing, the significance of a father in the development and emotional well being of a child is no less.