Father’s Day 2014 will be celebrated on the third Sunday in June in the U.S. and the U.K.
Specifically, the day falls on June 15.
The day was first celebrated in 1908 when a church in West Virginia sponsored the world’s first day to honor fathers, according to History.com.
The inspiration for the day was from Mother’s Day
“The campaign to celebrate the nation’s fathers did not meet with the same enthusiasm–perhaps because, as one florist explained, ‘fathers haven’t the same sentimental appeal that mothers have.’ On July 5, 1908, a West Virginia church sponsored the nation’s first event explicitly in honor of fathers, a Sunday sermon in memory of the 362 men who had died in the previous December’s explosions at the Fairmont Coal Company mines in Monongah, but it was a one-time commemoration and not an annual holiday,” says History.com.
A year later, Washington state woman Sonora Smart Dodd, who was raised only by her father, attempted to establish a day similar to Mother’s Day for male parents.
In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge urged state governments to observe Father’s Day. However, many men continued to disdain the day. As one historian writes, 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,’” the website states.
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