Fathers Day and its Origin
Fathers Day is a celebration honoring fathers and celebrating fatherhood, paternal bonds, and the influence of fathers in society. Many countries celebrate it on the third Sunday of June, but it is also celebrated widely on other days. Father’s Day was created to complement Mother’s Day, a celebration that honors mothers and motherhood.
Father’s Day was inaugurated in the United States in the early 20th century to complement Mother’s Day in celebrating fatherhood and male parenting.After the success obtained by Anna Jarvis with the promotion of Mother’s Day in the US, some wanted to create similar holidays for other family members, and Father’s Day was the choice most likely to succeed. There were other persons in the US who independently thought of “Father’s Day”,but the credit for the modern holiday is often given to Sonora Dodd, who was the driving force behind its establishment.
How did Fathers Day get started?
Father’s Day was founded in Spokane, Washington at the YMCA in 1910 by Sonora Smart Dodd, who was born in Arkansas. Its first celebration was in the Spokane YMCA on June 19, 1910. Her father, the Civil War veteran William Jackson Smart, was a single parent who raised his six children there. After hearing a sermon about Jarvis’ Mother’s Day in 1909, she told her pastor that fathers should have a similar holiday honoring them. Although she initially suggested June 5, her father’s birthday, the pastors did not have enough time to prepare their sermons, and the celebration was deferred to the third Sunday of June.
It did not have much success initially. In the 1920s, Dodd stopped promoting the celebration because she was studying in the Art Institute of Chicago, and it faded into relative obscurity, even in Spokane. In the 1930s Dodd returned to Spokane and started promoting the celebration again, raising awareness at a national level. She had the help of those trade groups that would benefit most from the holiday, for example the manufacturers of ties, tobacco pipes, and any traditional present to fathers. Since 1938 she had the help of the Father’s Day Council, founded by the New York Associated Men’s Wear Retailers to consolidate and systematize the commercial promotion. Americans resisted the holiday during a few decades, perceiving it as just an attempt by merchants to replicate the commercial success of Mother’s Day, and newspapers frequently featured cynical and sarcastic attacks and jokes. But the trade groups did not give up: they kept promoting it and even incorporated the jokes into their adverts, and they eventually succeeded.By the mid 1980s the Father’s Council wrote that “Father’s Day has become a ‘Second Christmas’ for all the men’s gift-oriented industries.”
How Fathers Day celebrated in India?
Fathers Day is honored today in India on the 2nd Sunday of June every year. Whilst most are aware of the occasion, a large number of girls celebrate and honor the day far more than boys. Most of the children who are studying or working abroad send flowers and gifts to their fathers who are living in India. Popular gifts for Fathers day range from Liquor Bottles, Perfumes, Tools, Electronics, Flowers, Chocolates, Cakes etc. At May Flower we customize the gifting by incorporating certain gifts into the floral bouquet adding value and design to the overall look and feel of the flowers sent. Do visit May Flower for more such ideas and giftings.
This article has been collectively formed with information from web articles, magazines, floral books etc.
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