Father’s Day is a celebration of fathers which was inaugurated several years following the creation of Mother’s Day.  Father’s Day is celebrated on a variety of dates worldwide and typically involves gift-giving, special dinners to fathers, and family-oriented activities.  This year it will be on June 17th, 2012.
The holiday was the creation of Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, Washington. After listening to a church sermon about Mother’s Day she felt strongly that fatherhood needed recognition, as well. She wanted a celebration that honored fathers like her own father, William Smart, a Civil War veteran who was left to raise his family alone when his wife died giving birth to their sixth child when Sonora was 16 years old.
With the assistance of her pastor, Sonora took the idea to the Spokane YMCA who endorsed Dodd’s idea and helped it spread by celebrating the first Father’s Day in 1910. Sonora suggested her father’s birthday, June 5, be established as the day to honor all Fathers. However, the pastors wanted more time to prepare, so on June 19, 1910, young members of the YMCA went to church wearing roses: a red rose to honor a living father, and a white rose to honor a deceased one. Dodd traveled through the city in a horse-drawn carriage, carrying gifts to shut-in fathers confined indoors by illness.
It took many years to make the holiday official. In spite of support from the YWCA, the YMCA, and churches, Father’s Day ran the risk of disappearing from the calendar. Where Mother’s Day was met with enthusiasm, Father’s Day was often met with laughter. The holiday was gathering attention slowly, but for the wrong reasons. It was the target of much satire, parody and derision, including jokes from the local newspaper. Many people saw it as the first step in filling the calendar with mindless promotions.
But, in 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson issued the first presidential proclamation honoring fathers, designating the third Sunday in June as Father’s Day. Six years later, the day was made a permanent national holiday when President Richard Nixon signed it into law in 1972.
Many businesses throughout the Palm Springs area provide special offers for the holiday, so be sure and treat dad to something special!