As it is in many other countries, the United States also celebrate Father’s Day. It is quite a new holiday – established in the beginning of the 20th century in order to complement
Mother’s Day.
Year 1910 was a prominent time for parent holidays. After Anna Jarvis established first Mother’s Day, Sonora Smart Dodd – a daughter of the Civil War veteran who raised six children as a single parent – decided that fathers should be honored in a similar way. For the first few years, however, the observance did not become popular. In the 1930s Sonora started to promote the day honoring fathers again, but this time she was supported by the Father’s Day Council and some trade groups that would benefit from the holiday. After years of the Congress’s resistance, in 1966 President Lyndon B. Johnson issued the first presidential proclamation designating the third Sunday of June as Father’s Day. In 1972 President Richard Nixon signed the holiday into law permanently.
Father’s Day is not a public holiday in the United States, so most businesses follow their regular Sunday opening hours. It is an occasion to give thanks to all fathers for what they do for their children, for their efforts fatherly love. Many people have the custom to send a card or give a gift to their fathers. Pupils at schools are often encouraged to make their own card or prepare a small hand-made gift for their father.
Did you know?
Another theory concerning the origin of the Father’s Day in the United States is connected with the Monongah mining disaster, sometimes referred to as the worst mining disaster in American history. It was an explosion that occurred in Fairmont Coal Company on December 6, 1907. 361 men were killed that day, 250 of which were fathers. More than 1,000 children became orphans. One of the girls who lost her father in this tragic event, Grace Golden Clayton, wanted to pay tribute to all the fathers who died in result of the explosion.