HAPPY FATHER’S’ DAY

Jun 18, 2017 Editorial, Features / Columnists

Today, Guyanese at home and abroad will join many others around the world to celebrate fatherhood and to honour fathers and father like figures. It is an occasion to mark and celebrate the contributions of fathers and father figures for making the lives of their children and society better.
Father’s Day celebrations began in Europe during the middle ages where it was and is still being celebrated on March 19 to commemorate the feast day of St. Joseph. The Catholic Church actively supported the celebration of fatherhood on St. Joseph’s day.The celebration was subsequently brought by the Spanish and Portuguese to Latin America, where it is still being celebrated on March 19 every year, though many countries in Europe and the Americas, including Canada and Britain have adopted the U.S. date, which is the third Sunday of June.
Father’s Day is celebrated on various days in many parts of the world mostly in March or in May. Different countries have a range of different ways to celebrate the day. In the United States, several events during the early 20th century may have inspired the idea of Father’s Day. One of these was the successful celebration of the Mother’s Day in the first decade of the 20th century.
Another was a memorial service held in 1908 for 362 men, many of them fathers, who were killed in a mining accident in West Virginia in December 1907. It was a one-time commemoration.
However, Sonora Smart Dodd, a woman from Spokane, Washington, was the influential figure to initiate the idea of Father’s Day in 1908. One of six children, Dodd and her siblings were raised by their father, a widower, after the death of their mother during childbirth. This was uncommon at that time, as many fathers would have placed their children in the care of others. Sonora felt that her father deserved recognition for what he had done.
She was inspired by the work of Julia Ward Howe, a social activist and Anna Jarvis from Pennsylvania whose pioneering efforts led to Mother’s Day celebrations.
Father’s Day was first celebrated state-wide in the US in the State of Washington on June 19, 1910. Slowly, it spread to other states. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson honoured the day and in 1924, President Calvin Coolidge urged all state governments to observe Father’s Day on the third Sunday in June but did not issue a proclamation.
Two earlier attempts to formally recognize Father’s Day had been defeated by Congress. However, in 1966, President Lynden Johnson issued the first presidential proclamation to honor fathers and designate the third Sunday in June as Father’s Day.
In 1972, Father’s Day was made permanent by President Richard Nixon who signed it into law. Today, it is estimated that Americans spend more than $1 billion each year on Father’s Day gifts.
In Guyana and elsewhere, father figures can include fathers, stepfathers, fathers-in-law, grand-fathers and great-grandfathers.
Restaurants may be busier than usual on Father’s Day as some children take their fathers out for a treat.
Everyone should celebrate Father’s Day in honour of their fathers and to thank them for all their love and support. Fathers are crucial to the early development of children, especially boys, but many children grew up without them being in their lives. Single parenting is the reality in Guyana and more often than not in these arrangements, fathers are absent.
It is estimated that women are about 95 percent of single households in Guyana and 86 percent worldwide. It is very important for fathers to assume their role in the family unit. Happy Father’s Day.

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