Father's Day

FATHER’S DAY

by Anton Antonio

June 20, 2015

Every 3^rd Sunday of June, we, Filipinos, celebrate “Father’s Day”.  To better understand this American tradition and annual event, let’s check on the history and rationale of “Father’s Day” (https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Father%27s_Day):

“Father’s Day is a celebration honoring fathers and celebrating fatherhood, paternal bonds, and the influence of fathers in society.  Many countries celebrate it on the third Sunday of June, though it is also celebrated widely on other days by many other countries.

HISTORY:  Father’s Day was inaugurated in the United States in the early 20^th century to complement Mother’s Day in celebrating fatherhood and male parenting.

FIRST OBSERVANCE:  Grace Golden Clayton may have been inspired by Anna Jarvis’ crusade to establish Mother’s Day; two months prior, Jarvis had held a celebration for her dead mother in Grafton, West Virginia, a town about 24 kilometers away from Fairmont.  After the success obtained by Anna Jarvis with the promotion of Mother’s Day in Grafton, West Virginia, the first observance of a “Father’s Day” was held on July 15, 1908, in Fairmont, West Virginia, in the Williams Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church South, now known as Central United Methodist Church.  Grace Golden Clayton was mourning the loss of her father when, on December 1907, the Monongah Mining Disaster in nearby Monongah killed 361 men, 250 of them fathers, leaving around a thousand fatherless children.  Clayton suggested her pastor Robert Thomas Webb to honor all those fathers.  Clayton’s event did not have repercussions outside of Fairmont for several reasons, among them: the city was overwhelmed by other events, the celebration was never promoted outside of the town itself and no proclamation was made in the City Council.  Also two events overshadowed this event: the celebration of Independence Day July 4, 1908, with 12,000 attendants and several shows including a hot air balloon event, which took over the headlines in the following days, and the death of a 16-year-old girl on July 4.  The local church and Council were overwhelmed and they did not even think of promoting the event, and it was not celebrated again for many years.  The original sermon was not reproduced in press and it was lost.  Finally, Clayton was a quiet person, who never promoted the event or even talked to other persons about it.

ESTABLISHMENT OF A HOLIDAY:  In 1910, a Father’s Day celebration was held in Spokane, Washington, at the YMCA by Sonora Smart Dodd, who was born in Arkansas.  Its first celebration was in the Spokane YMCA on June 19, 1910.  Her father, the Civil War veteran William Jackson Smart, was a single parent who raised his six children there.  After hearing a sermon about Jarvis’ Mother’s Day in 1909 at Central Methodist Episcopal Church, she told her pastor that fathers should have a similar holiday honoring them.  Although she initially suggested June 5, her father’s birthday, the pastors did not have enough time to prepare their sermons, and the celebration was deferred to the third Sunday of June.  Several local clergymen accepted the idea, and on 19 June 1910, the first Father’s Day, “sermons honoring fathers were presented throughout the city.  However, in the 1920s, Dodd stopped promoting the celebration because she was studying in the Art Institute of Chicago, and it faded into relative obscurity again, even in Spokane.  In the 1930s, Dodd returned to Spokane and started promoting the celebration again, raising awareness at a national level.  She had the help of those trade groups that would benefit most from the holiday, for example the manufacturers of ties, tobacco pipes, and any traditional present to fathers.  By 1938 she had the help of the Father’s Day Council, founded by the New York Associated Men’s Wear Retailers to consolidate and systematize the commercial promotion.  Americans resisted the holiday for its first few decades, viewing it as nothing more than an attempt by merchants to replicate the commercial  success of Mother’s Day, and newspapers frequently features cynical and sarcastic attacks and jokes.  However, said merchants remained resilient and even incorporated these attacks into their advertisements.  By the mid-1980s, the Father’s Council wrote that “Father’s Day has become a Second Christmas for all the men’s gift-oriented industries”.  A bill to accord national recognition of the holiday was introduced in Congress in 1913.  In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson went to Spokane to speak in a Father’s Day celebration and wanted to make it official, but Congress resisted, fearing that it would become commercialized.  US President Calvin Coolidge recommended in 1924 that the day be observed by the nation, but stopped short of issuing a national proclamation.  Two earlier attempts to formally recognize the holiday had been defeated by Congress.  In 1957, Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith wrote a proposal accusing Congress of ignoring fathers for 40 years while honoring mothers, thus “singling out just one of our two parents”.  In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson issued the first presidential proclamation honoring fathers, designating the third Sunday in June as Father’s Day.  Six years later, the day was made a permanent national holiday when President Richard Nixon signed it into law in 1972.  In addition to Father’s Day, International Men’s Day is celebrated in many countries on November 19, for men and boys who are not fathers.

SPELLING:  In the United States, Dodd used the “Fathers’ Day” spelling on her original petition for the holiday, but the spelling “Father’s Day” was already used in 1913 when the bill was introduced to the U.S. Congress as the first attempt to establish the holiday, and it was still spelled the same way when its creator was commended in 2008 by the U.S. Congress.”

Clearly, Father’s Day is an American holiday and tradition.  But why is this Methodist-initiated tradition such a big hit in a predominantly Catholic Philippines?  Perhaps, the answer to this question is rooted on the extremely close (and oftentimes extended) family ties of the Filipino.  Perhaps, if the Americans did not promote it, the Filipinos will.  So… to all of us Pinoy fathers, “Happy Father’s Day!”

Just my little thoughts…

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