Father’s Day

Many years ago, when I was a kid, my father would scold me or my brothers if we failed to carry out our tasks – raking leaves, shoveling snow, mowing the lawn, or sweeping the back patio. The scolding always referenced those two days set aside to show appreciation to parents. Dad would preach, “Mother’s Day, Shmother’s Day, Father’s Day, Shmather’s Day, what about all the other days of the year?”

As a result, to this day, each year on one of the above-mentioned days, my brother Joe will call me or I will call him and begin our conversation with, “Mother’s Day, Shmother’s Day, Father’s Day, Shmather’s Day!”

This parental admonition kind of lumps the two special days together, but I believe there is a difference between the two. As a father, I feel that the spirit of Father’s Day leaves it as a second-class holiday compared to the more important Mother’s Day.

Are mothers more deserving than us fathers? Maybe so.

Mother’s Day has a long history that is rooted in the work of Ann Jarvis who founded Mother’s Friendship Day in 1868 to try to reunite families divided by the Civil War. Her efforts as the years passed were mostly focused on mothers’ roles in improved sanitation and standard of living. She died in 1905.

Anna Jarvis, her daughter, was inspired by her mother’s work and felt that a day should be set aside to honor mothers. She obtained help from the Philadelphia merchant, John Wanamaker. On May 10, 1908, the first Mother’s Day was celebrated at a worship service at St. Andrew’s Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia. On the same day, there was a larger event at the auditorium of the Wanamaker store in Philadelphia. Over the next few years, many states made Mother’s Day an official holiday, and on May 8, 1914, U.S. Congress made the second Sunday in May the nation’s official Mother’s Day. President Woodrow Wilson signed the bill. And Mother’s Day has been celebrated annually ever since.

Father’s Day has a more checkered past. It began in Spokane, Washington, in 1910. Sonora Smart Dodd heard a sermon about Mother’s Day in 1909, and this stirred in her the feeling that fathers deserved equal recognition. Her father, William Jackson Smart, a Civil War veteran, had raised her and her five siblings as a single parent after his wife passed. The next year, she asked local pastors to celebrate fathers. The Spokane Ministerial Alliance pastors prepared their sermons and made the date the third Sunday in June. The first Father’s Day celebration was June 19, 1910.

Father’s Day did not catch on right away. Initial observances tended to fade away as the years passed. Dodd stopped promoting it as she was studying art in Chicago. In the 1930s, she returned to Spokane and started promoting Father’s Day with the support of manufacturers of ties, pipes, and menswear.

In 1916, President Wilson spoke in Spokane at a Father’s Day celebration.

President Calvin Coolidge supported Father’s Day. But the Congress failed to pass any legislation to denote a Father’s Day. Congress feared that such a holiday would be commercialized. But, in many states, Father’s Day was observed without an official designation.

In 1957, Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine argued that Congress had ignored Father’s Day for 40 years while honoring mothers. In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson proclaimed the third Sunday in June as Father’s Day, and on April 24, 1972, President Richard Nixon finally signed a bill designating Father’s Day as an official U.S. holiday, 58 years after Mother’s Day was declared.

Where are we now? Take your mother to brunch on Mother’s Day. You had better make a reservation well in advance if you want brunch with Mama. Bring her flowers, candy, a loving greeting card, or maybe a long-distance phone call. A present? I was told long ago that a present for Mom must not have a plug. Father’s Day brunch? Give me a break. How about a chain saw instead or a cool dashcam for the car? Send a card with a funny line such as, “I gave my father $100 and said, ‘Buy yourself something that will make your life easier.’ So he went out and bought a present for my mother.” (Rita Rudner) Or contemplate other witty analyses such as “Father’s Day is important because, besides being the day on which we honor Dad, it’s the one day of the year that Brookstone does any business.” (Jimmy Fallon)

My father died when I was a teenager, so Mother’s Day gained importance for me. I cannot recall any special observation, but when I was in my early 30s, my brother Joe and I bought the cemetery plot next to my father’s and gave it to Mom for Mother’s Day.

OK, I think you get the idea. No doubt about it, Father’s Day takes second place.

Do I care? No. I say, “Mother’s Day, Shmother’s Day, Father’s Day, Shmather’s Day.”