Father's Day is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year on June 19. It all began in 1909 when a young woman hoped to have a special day to honor her father, William Jackson Smart, a farmer and a Civil War veteran.
In May of that year Sonora Smart Dodd attended church in Spokane, Washington, and listened to a Mother’s Day sermon. Sonora’s mother had died given birth to her in 1898, making Sonora the youngest child in the family. After her mother’s death, her father had then taken the responsibility of single-handedly raising the newborn and her five older brothers.
The following year, Dodd hoped to especially honor her father on June 5th, her father's birthday. She petitioned for the Father’s Day holiday to be recognized in her city. The YMCA of Spokane, Washington, and the Ministerial Alliance endorsed Dodd’s idea of Father’s Day and became sponsors of the celebration. Though she had hoped the celebration could be held on June 5, planning difficulties pushed the first Father’s Day celebration to Sunday, June 19, 1910.
On that day Sonora delivered presents to handicapped fathers. Boys from the YMCA decorated the father’s lapels with fresh-cut roses (red for living fathers, white for deceased fathers), and the city’s ministers devoted their sermon topics to fatherhood. Dodd and her infant son rode along on a horse-drawn carriage through the city, bringing roses and gifts to home-bound fathers.
The U.S. Congress had been quick to officially declare the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day in 1914— after it was first celebrated on May 10, 1908. It took much longer for Father's Day to be legally recognized.
Sonora’s celebration started its path to becoming a national holiday. The Father’s Day events in Spokane in 1910 were widely publicized and struck a chord that reached all the way to Washington, D.C. Thanks to Dodd's celebration and the efforts of others, the observation of a day for fathers steadily gained popularity over the years.
It was not until 1924, however, that President Calvin Coolidge decided to officially support establishing a special day to honor fathers. Coolidge hoped recognizing fathers would establish closer relationships between fathers and their children and would impress upon fathers the full measure of their obligations.
The holiday gained more traction through the efforts of a group of men’s clothing retailers in New York City in 1938, when they established the National Council for the Promotion of Father's Day.
In 1966 President Lyndon Johnson signed a Presidential Proclamation that set aside the third Sunday in June that year as a day to honor the nation’s fathers.
On April 24, 1972, President Richard Nixon made Father’s Day an official and permanent holiday. From then on Father’s Day has been observed each year on the third Sunday in June.
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“Every father should remember one day his son will follow his example, not his advice.” ―Charles Kettering
“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” - Frederick Douglas
A father is implored to bring his children up in the ways of the Lord, to discipline them and to encourage, comfort and instruct them. (See Ephesians 6:4)
In one of God’s Other Ways© celebrating Father’s Day honors earthly fathers, as the 5th commandment calls us to do. Exodus 20:12a states: “Honor your father and mother”… This commandment is crucial for us to study and understand, because it relates directly to how God has ordained and ordered this world. As children made alive in Christ, believers are called to honor their parents out of love and gratitude to God for the care He provides through their nurturing.
God is our heavenly Father, the life-giver with full authority and infinite power that goes beyond all human understanding.
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