UNITED STATES, — Today is the day, as a nation, we celebrate dads. A day to get dad a mug he doesn't really need, a tie he probably won't wear, maybe a shirt and a power tool. Or some other kind of dad-ish gift that is pressed into our collective notion of 'dad-gift.'
Father's Day started far before gifting your own father with a ceramic sculpture coupled with a singing fish. It began as a religious holiday and is still celebrated in that way around the world. In Europe it has been around since the Middle Ages, as St. Joseph's Day, the husband of Mary.
In the United States, the first Father's Day was in Washington in 1910 and its origins are in Mother's Day, the first being in 1908 and made a national holiday in 1914.
According to History.com, when Father's Day was introduced it wasn't met with the same enthusiasm as Mother's Day.
"On July 5, 1908, a West Virginia church sponsored the nation’s first event explicitly in honor of fathers, a Sunday sermon in memory of the 362 men who had died in the previous December’s explosions at the Fairmont Coal Company mines in Monongah, but it was a one-time commemoration and not an annual holiday,' the website stated.
However, the next year a Spokane woman named Sonora Smart Dodd started campaigning for a type of Father's Day. She was able to have the day, June 19, 1910, celebrated in the state of Washington.
In 1916, President Wilson showed support for the day and in 1924 President Coolidge advocated for a national Father's Day.
Then, in 1972, President Nixon made it a Federal Holiday. Officially making June 16 the 'Day for the Dads.'
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