Father's Day 2010 Is Centennial: How Did Holiday Start?

[The Straight Story]

Father's Day 2010 Is Centennial: How Did Holiday Start?
Find out why Father's Day is no Hallmark holiday, why Dad doesn't mind being shortchanged, and more.


As Father's Day hits its centennial on June 20, 2010, sons and daughters around the world are expected to open their wallets wider—slightly—in celebration. Because of the slowly recovering global economy, people are expected to spend about 4 percent more than in 2009 on cards, ties, tools, clothes, and other Father's Day gifts.

But the first Father's Day, a hundred years ago, was decidedly humbler, and refreshingly noncommercial.

Father's Day was only officially made a national holiday in the U.S. in 1972, when President Richard Nixon declared it to be the third Sunday of June. But the holiday actually traces its origins to early 20th-century Washington State.

Inspired by a Mother's Day sermon she heard at church in 1909, Spokane resident Sonora Smart-Dodd—one of six children being raised by a single dad—also wanted to honor her father. She encouraged local churches to institute the first Father's Day observance the following year, and the idea caught on. (Learn more about the beginnings of Father's Day.)

Psychology lecturer Nicole Gilbert Cote at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, who researches Father's Day phenomena, noted that U.S. President Bill Clinton in 1994 launched a gender neutral "Parent's Day" on the last Sunday in July.

"Ultimately, Parent's Day did not take off as people had probably hoped and expected," she said. "And that makes perfect sense to me, because Mother's Day and Father's Day have such commercial appeal."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/06/100618-fathers-day-2010-100-centennial-cards-gifts-nation/

[Bitwit1234]

1. And the rose is the official flower of Father's Day.

[tilsammans]

2. Thank you for posting that! I had no idea.

Happy Father's Day to all! :toast: