Father’s Day
Where does this day come from?
When and where was it first celebrated?
The first person to come up with the idea of setting aside a day to honour fathers was Sonora Louise Smart Dodd of Spokane, Washington, in the United States, in 1909, after she heard a sermon on Mother’s Day. Sonora wanted to honour her father, William Jackson Smart, who had raised his six children on his own after his wife died in 1898.
Sonora Dodd submitted a petition recommending a day to celebrate fathers, and some groups supported it. As the crowning of her efforts, the city of Spokane celebrated the first Father’s Day on 19 June 1910. The custom then spread to other countries and eventually around the world.
The date of the day varies from country to country, and some have made it a religious feast in the Church: in some Catholic countries Father’s Day is celebrated on 19 March, the feast of Saint Joseph the carpenter; others celebrate it at the start of summer, on 21 June; while others, especially in the West, have adopted the original date used in the United States, which always falls on the third Sunday of June.
On this blessed day, we pray and ask our Father in heaven to keep and bless all our fathers and fill them with his graces, so that they may be good and raise their children according to the inspirations of the Holy Spirit, after the example of Saint Joseph the Just. Amen.
Happy Father’s Day to all fathers,
and eternal rest to those who have gone before us into eternal life.
Rita of the Sawt El Rab team
