Although Father*s Day is not as popular as its counter part, or as we call it Mother*s Day but the concept is catching on and many children (some not as young as you think) honour their fathers in different ways.
Some go out of their way to celebrate the occasion, with presents, flowers and the whole shebang while some go the old but popular way of declaring their affection with homemade cards and hugs.
Slowly but steadily the media is also warming up to the concept of Father*s Day and special programmes and plays are scheduled to mark this special day.
Some people are of the opinion that the day should be used to honour any person who served as a father figure, irrespective of who he may be. The list this way can be endless and can include stepfathers, uncles, grandfathers or even elder brothers.
The first celebration is said to have occurred in a West Virginia church in 1908. Grace Golden Clayton suggested the observance after an explosion in a nearby town killed 361 men. That first Father’s Day, however, was not widely publicized and credit for founding the holiday is rarely given to Clayton.
Instead, a more popular story involves Sonora Smart Dodd’s decision to honor fathers. Dodd and her siblings were raised solely by their father after their mother’s death. In 1909, she asked her pastor to help organize a celebration that would occur in June, her father’s birth month.
Dodd’s request was granted and her first Father’s Day was celebrated June 19, 1910. The event occurred in Dodd’s hometown of Spokane, Wash. It featured the presentation of a flag by President Woodrow Wilson and people wore roses to honor their fathers—red for the living and white for those who had died.
In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge supported the idea of a national Father’s Day, but failed to make it a holiday. A national Father’s Day committee was later formed in 1936. It was not until 1966, however, that more efforts were made to make it a holiday. President Lyndon B. Johnson made a presidential proclamation declaring the third Sunday of June as Father's Day, which President Richard Nixon signed into law in 1972. It has been nationally observed ever since.
Interestingly, Father*s Day falls on the third Sunday of June in Pakistan while the rest of the world celebrates it according to the time zone it falls in. The concept of setting aside a day for our fathers is basically a hundred years old and started when a woman, Sonora Smart Dodd, from Spokane, Washington was listening to a Mother*s Day sermon back in 1909 and decided that our fathers need a special day as well.
