Father’s Day, A History Lesson

Father’s Day is not a Jewish holiday, however we are taught to honor our fathers and mothers. Whether you choose to celebrate or not, Father’s Day has a very interesting history. Unlike Mother’s Day which became a holiday in 1914, thanks to President Woodrow Wilson, Father’s Day didn’t officially become a holiday until 1972.

In 1908, a woman in West Virginia tried to make Father’s Day an annual holiday. Then in July, 1910, the governor of Washington proclaimed the nation’s first Father’s Day. However, a campaign to celebrate our nation’s fathers did not meet with the same enthusiasm as Mother’s Day. Perhaps because, as one florist explained, “fathers haven’t the same sentimental appeal that mothers have.” And retailers didn’t see the same potential.

In 1916, President Wilson honored Father’s Day by using telegraph signals to unfurl a flag in Spokane when he pressed a button in Washington, DC, but he didn’t proclaim it a holiday. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge urged state governments to observe Father’s Day. However, many men continued to disdain the day. As one historian wrote, “they scoffed at the holiday’s sentimental attempts to domesticate manliness with flowers and gift-giving, or they derided the proliferation of such holidays as a commercial gimmick to sell more products—often paid for by the father himself.”

During the 1920’s and 1930’s, a movement arose to scrap Mother’s Day and Father’s Day altogether in favor of a single holiday, Parents’ Day. Every year on Mother’s Day, pro-Parents’ Day groups rallied in Central Park as a public reminder that both parents should be loved and respected together. However, the Depression derailed this effort to combine the holidays. Struggling retailers and advertisers redoubled their efforts to make Father’s Day  exciting for men, promoting goods such as ties, hats, socks, pipes, golf clubs, other sporting goods, and greeting cards. When World War II began, advertisers wanted Americans to believe that celebrating Father’s Day was a way to honor American troops and support the war effort. By the end of the war, Father’s Day still wasn’t as big a holiday as Mother’s Day.

It wasn’t until 1972, in the middle of a hard-fought presidential re-election campaign, that Richard Nixon signed a proclamation making Father’s Day a holiday at last.

Today, economists estimate that Americans spend more than $1 billion each year on Father’s Day gifts.