PotW 6/13/12

Hi Everyone!

I have written before about the history of Mother's Day.  In brief, Mother's Day came about as a result of the peace and reconcilliation campaigns of the post- Civil War era, when mother's of both Union and Confederate soldiers came together out of desire to heal a divided nation.  It veered toward the more commercialized holiday we now know in 1908, when the Wanamaker department store in Philadelphia sponsored a service dedicated to mothers in its auditorium.  A mere year later in 1909, 45 states were observing a "Mother's Day" holiday, and in 1914 it was declared a national holiday by President Woodrow Wilson.

But when and how did Father's Day come about? (excerpted from History.com)

The campaign to celebrate the nation’s fathers did not meet with the same enthusiasm as a celebration for mothers--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. The next year, a Spokane, Washington woman named Sonora Smart Dodd, one of six children raised by a widower, tried to establish an official equivalent to Mother’s Day for male parents. She went to local churches, the YMCA, shopkeepers and government officials to drum up support for her idea, and she was successful: Washington State celebrated the nation’s first statewide Father’s Day on July 19, 1910.
   
Slowly, the holiday spread. In 1916, President Wilson honored the day by using telegraph signals to unfurl a flag in Spokane when he pressed a button in Washington, D.C. 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.”

During the 1920s and 1930s, 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 New York City’s Central Park--a public reminder, said Parents’ Day activist and radio performer Robert Spere, “that both parents should be loved and respected together.” Paradoxically, however, the Depression derailed this effort to combine and de-commercialize the holidays. Struggling retailers and advertisers redoubled their efforts to make Father’s Day a “second Christmas” for men, promoting goods such as neckties, hats, socks, pipes and tobacco, golf clubs and other sporting goods, and greeting cards. When World War II began, advertisers began to argue 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 may not have been a federal holiday, but it was a national institution.

In 1972, in the middle of a hard-fought presidential re-election campaign, Richard Nixon signed a proclamation making Father’s Day a federal holiday at last, 58 years after the first official Mother's Day.  Today, economists estimate that Americans spend more than $1 billion each year on Father’s Day gifts.  (No count has been kept of how many ties and soaps-on-a-rope that represents)

So--for some unique (like Dad), personalized (because he deserves it) and utilitarian (because Dads are practical) gift ideas, check out the website:http://www.twowillowsjewelry.com

Until next week--Spoil Dad a little, even if he says he doesn't want you to!

Kim