The Many Origins of Father’s Day.

 

The campaign to celebrate the nation’s fathers did not meet with the same enthusiasm as that of the Mothers’ Day. This, perhaps, was because “fathers haven’t the same sentimental appeal that mothers have.”  

A Spokane, Washington woman named Sonora Smart Dodd, one of six children raised by a widower, tried to establish an official equivalent to Mother’s Day for male parents. She went to local churches, the YMCA, shopkeepers and government officials to drum up support for her idea, and she was successful: Washington State celebrated the nation’s first statewide Father’s Day on June 19, 1910.  

Slowly, the holiday spread. In 1916, President Wilson honored the day by using telegraph signals to unfurl a flag in Spokane when he pressed a button in Washington, D.C. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge urged state governments to observe Father’s Day. Today, the day honoring fathers is celebrated in the United States on the third Sunday of June: Father’s Day 2017 occurs on June 18; the following year, Father’s Day 2018 falls on June 17.

 

In other countries, especially in Europe and Latin America, fathers have always been honored on St. Joseph’s Day, a traditional Catholic holiday that falls on March 19.  

During the 1920s and 1930s, a movement arose to scrap Mother’s Day and Father’s Day altogether in favor of a single holiday, Parents’ Day. Every year on Mother’s Day, pro-Parents’ Day groups rallied in New York City’s Central Park, a public reminder that both parents should be loved and respected together. Paradoxically however, the Great Depression derailed this effort to combine and de-commercialize the holidays. Struggling retailers and advertisers redoubled their efforts to make Father’s Day a “second Christmas” for men, promoting goods such as neckties, hats, socks, pipes and tobacco, golf clubs and other sporting goods, and greeting cards.

And finally, in 1972, during a hard-fought presidential re-election campaign, Richard Nixon signed a proclamation making Father’s Day a federal holiday. Today, economists estimate that Americans spend more than $1 billion each year on Father’s Day gifts.

My Strange Christmas Gift.

On Christmas day, it was raining like crazy as I left for work. Shortly afterward, a front tire burst in motion. I managed to pull into a gas station and would have relied on my insurance company for help but they said it would take hours. After removing the bad tire, I reached for the donut (extra tire) but to my horror, it had was totally flat. Unfortunately, the gas station had turned off their Air pump because of the holiday. I felt like kicking it. Now, at my tether’s end, I sat in the car praying for a miracle.

Soon, a middle-aged lady pulled into the gas station to ask for directions to a store. I told her all the stores had closed for Christmas. She thanked me and was about to pull away when, out of curiosity, she asked what I was doing in the rain. I told her about my situation. And to my surprise, she simply said: “I’ll take you to a gas station where you can fill-up the spare tire…”

We kept going from one gas station to the other. None however had a functioning Air pump. I was exasperated until finally, we got lucky. But I didn’t have quarters to operate it. As if on cue, the lady opened her glove compartment to get the needed $1:50 coins. After a while, it dawned on both of us that the extra tire was not taking in air. It was like pouring water into a basket.

Now utterly perplexed, I politely asked if the lady could take me to work. Not minding the distance, she said “why not?” At this stage, we were both drenched and tired. But not for once did she express any regret or frustration. When I asked her about this, she only smiled. She however admonished me for being blasphemous when I referred to her as my guardian angel. And when I offered her money for gas, she felt offended and disappointed. To her, the whole thing was her Christmas gift to me.

As she dropped me off at work, the lady ignored my expression of gratitude. She said: “God has a reason for everything. So, in every situation you find yourself…no matter how disappointing or frustrating…don't despair. Instead, just give thanks to the Lord. Merry Christmas!”