In May, we discovered how Mother's Day became a day to celebrate mothers. Father's Day is this Sunday, and it began as a celebration of fathers to complement Mother's Day in celebrating fatherhood. In 1910, Sonora Smart Dodd started her own celebration of Father's Day in Spokane, Washington to honor her father. He was a Civil War veteran and had raised six children as a single parent. She had wanted the celebration to be on his birthday, June 5th, but there was not enough time for those helping to make the arrangements. So the celebration was set for the third Sunday of June, June 19th. Within three years, a bill was written to make Father's Day a national holiday, and President Woodrow Wilson went to Spokane to speak in a Father's Day celebration to make it an official holiday. Congress, however, would not agree, because they were afraid that it would become commercialized. Many proposals were written to make Father's Day a national holiday, but it wasn't until 1972 when President Richard Nixon signed it into law that Father's Day became an official national holiday. How do you celebrate Father's Day?
Father's Day
