The Origin of Father's Day
A woman by the name Grace Golden Clayton may have been credited for creating Father’s Day. Grace Golden Clayton was believed to have been inspired by a woman named Anna Jarvis, who held a memorial for her mother after she passed away in 1908 in Grafton West Virginia.
With the successful execution of Mothers Day in Grafton, the first observance of Father’s Day was held on July 5, 1908, in Fairmont West Virginia. Grace Golden Clayton was mourning the loss of her father in 1907, after the Monogah Mining Disaster which killed 361 men, and 250 fathers.
Unfortunately Grace Golden Clayton’s “Father’s Day” didn’t catch on outside Fairmont because the city was overwhelmed with other events. Independence Day also overshadowed the first occurrences of “Father’s Day”. As a result, “Father’s Day” wasn’t celebrated again for many years.
In 1910 a YMCA in Spokane Washington held a Fathers Day celebration on behalf of Sonora Smart Dodd. Dodd was a Spokane resident whose father Willam Jackson Smart was a civil war veteran and a single parent that raised 6 children. After hearing a sermon about Jarvis’ Mother's Day in 1909, Sonora Dodd suggested to her church pastor that fathers should have a similar holiday to honour them.
In the 1920’s Sonora Dodd stopped promoting Father’s Day because she was studying at the Art Institute of Chicago. The holiday faded away even in the city of origin, Spokane Washington. Dodd returned to Spokane in the 1930’s and started to promote the celebration again, this time, raising awareness at a national level. She got help from trade groups that had the most to benefit, like the manufacturers of ties, tobacco pipes, and any other traditional gifts for fathers. By 1938 Dodd had the help of the Father’s Day Council, founded by the New York Associated Menswear Retailers to consolidate the commercial promotion. For the first few decades, American’s resisted the holiday as nothing more than an attempt to replicate the commercial success of Mother’s Day. Newspapers frequently featured sarcastic and cynical attacks and jokes aimed at Father’s Day but said merchants remained devoted to the cause, and even incorporated the attacks into their advertisements.
By 1913 there was a bill to accord national recognition of the holiday. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson wanted to make Father’s Day official, but congress resisted, fearing that it would become too commercialized. In 1924 President Calvin Coolidge recommended that the day should be observed by the nation, but stopped short of issuing a national proclamation. Congress defeated two earlier attempts to formally recognize the holiday. By 1957 a Maine Senator by the name Margaret Chase Smith wrote a proposal accusing Congress of ignoring fathers for 40 years while honouring mothers and choosing only one side of the parental unit. President Lyndon B. Johnson issued a presidential proclamation honouring fathers in 1966 and designated the third Sunday of June as Father’s Day. The day was made a permanent holiday 6 years later in 1972 when President Richard Nixon signed it into law.
Today, in addition to Father’s Day, International Men’s Day is celebrated in numerous countries.
So now that there’s no question that Father’s Day is a retail holiday, check out these great gifts for dad: