Image by loswl via Flickr
Fathers’ day is one of those days that I’m not really sure about.
Is it really a "special" day or is it just another one of those "Hallmark" days, invented to put the commercial squeeze on hard-pressed families… applying pressure to buy over-priced cards, eat out in over-priced restaurants and generally spend money that could be better employed elsewhere?
Actually the truth is somewhere in between. Fathers’ Day began, by all accounts, back in the early 20th century in America, as a holiday to celebrate fatherhood and male parenting; something to counterbalance the already popular Mothers’ Day celebrations. The earliest advocate of a male-orientated holiday was a woman — Sonora Smart Dodd — who was apparently attending a Mothers’ Day celebration in 1909, when she decided to hold a similar day in honour of her father the following year. So on the 19th of June 1910 Ms Dodd presided over what’s believed to be the first ever observance of a fathers’ day holiday.
It took some time for the holiday to become official. While the concept of Mothers’ Day was met with universal enthusiasm, Fathers’ Day, despite being supported by influential bodies like the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) and the Church, was generally greeted with scepticism and amusement by the general population.
Slowly the idea gained traction… and in the 1930s, spotting an opportunity to boost commerce, the "Associated Menswear Retailers" formed a special committee with the sole purpose of legitimising and commercialising Fathers’ Day among the masses. By the 1980’s the chairman proclaimed the committee’s mission a resounding success. In the US at least, Fathers’ Day had become a three-week commercial extravaganza… a "second Christmas".