Father’s Day | May 2022
Father’s Day 2022
The Nation’s first Father’s day was celebrated on June 19th, 1910 in the state of Washington. It wasn’t until the year 1972, 58 years after Mother’s Day became an official holiday, that Father’s day became a holiday in the U.S. This year, 2022, father’s day falls on Sunday, June 19th as it does every year.
The Campaign for father’s day was not met with the same enthusiasm as the idea of Mother’s day was. Perhaps because back then fathers might not have had the same sentimental appeal to the date as mothers had for Mother’s Day.
On July 5 of 1908, a West Virginia church sponsored the United States’ first event that honored fathers. A Sunday sermon in memory of 362 men who had died in the previous December’s explosions at the Fairmount Coal Company mines in Monongah. Though this was a one-time celebrated occasion and not an annual holiday like Father’s day would become.
In the next year, a woman in Washington named Sonora Smart Dodd tried to establish a Mother’s day holiday but for men. It stuck and Washington State celebrated the first Father’s day in the year 1910.
The holiday spread and in 1916, President Wilson honored the day by using telegraph signals to unfurl a flag in Spokane when he pressed a button in Washington D.C. In 1924, president Calvin Coolidge urged state governments to observe Father’s Day.
Today the day that honors fathers falls on the third Sunday of June in the United States. In other countries, especially in Europe and Latin America, fathers are honored on St. Joseph’s Day, a traditional Catholic holiday that falls on March 19th.
Although Father’s Day is a good day to celebrate the love that children have for their fathers, there is some controversy that has been attached to the holiday. We at RiverCourt wish all the fathers a happy Father’s Day.
