{"id":1052,"date":"2026-06-01T09:54:54","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T13:54:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/croswellpresbyterian.org\/?p=1052"},"modified":"2026-06-10T10:22:03","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T14:22:03","slug":"fathers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/croswellpresbyterian.org\/index.php\/2026\/06\/01\/fathers\/","title":{"rendered":"Father&#8217;s Day"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"History\">History<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Father&#8217;s Day was inaugurated in the United States in the early 20th century to complement&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mother%27s_Day\">Mother&#8217;s Day<\/a>&nbsp;in celebrating fathers, fathering, and fatherhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Father&#8217;s Day was founded in&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Spokane,_Washington\">Spokane<\/a>,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Washington_(state)\">Washington<\/a>, at the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/YMCA\">YMCA<\/a>&nbsp;in 1910 by&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sonora_Smart_Dodd\">Sonora Smart Dodd<\/a>, who was born in&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Arkansas\">Arkansas<\/a>.<sup><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Father%27s_Day_(United_States)#cite_note-Schmidt_276-3\">[3]<\/a><\/sup>&nbsp;Its first celebration was in the Spokane YMCA on June 19, 1910.<sup><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Father%27s_Day_(United_States)#cite_note-Schmidt_276-3\">[3]<\/a><\/sup><sup><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Father%27s_Day_(United_States)#cite_note-Father's_Day_United_States-4\">[4]<\/a><\/sup>&nbsp;Her father, the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/American_Civil_War\">Civil War<\/a>&nbsp;veteran William Jackson Smart, was a single parent who raised his six children there.<sup><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Father%27s_Day_(United_States)#cite_note-Schmidt_276-3\">[3]<\/a><\/sup>&nbsp;After hearing a sermon about&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Anna_Jarvis\">Anna Jarvis<\/a>&#8216; Mother&#8217;s Day at Central Methodist Episcopal Church in 1909, she told her pastor that fathers should have a similar holiday honoring them.<sup><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Father%27s_Day_(United_States)#cite_note-Schmidt_276-3\">[3]<\/a><\/sup><sup><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Father%27s_Day_(United_States)#cite_note-5\">[5]<\/a><\/sup>&nbsp;Although she initially suggested June 5, her father&#8217;s birthday, the pastors of the Spokane Ministerial Alliance did not have enough time to prepare their sermons, and the celebration was deferred to the third Sunday of June.<sup><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Father%27s_Day_(United_States)#cite_note-myers_185-6\">[6]<\/a><\/sup><sup><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Father%27s_Day_(United_States)#cite_note-larossa_first-7\">[7]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It did not have much success initially. In the 1920s, Dodd stopped promoting the celebration because she was studying at the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Art_Institute_of_Chicago\">Art Institute of Chicago<\/a>, and it faded into relative obscurity, even in Spokane.<sup><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Father%27s_Day_(United_States)#cite_note-8\">[8]<\/a><\/sup>&nbsp;In the 1930s, Dodd returned to Spokane and started promoting the celebration again, raising its awareness at a national level.<sup><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Father%27s_Day_(United_States)#cite_note-9\">[9]<\/a><\/sup>&nbsp;She had the help of those trade groups that would benefit most from the holiday, for example the manufacturers of ties, tobacco pipes, and any traditional presents to fathers.<sup><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Father%27s_Day_(United_States)#cite_note-10\">[10]<\/a><\/sup>&nbsp;Since 1938, she had the help of the Father&#8217;s Day Council, founded by the New York Associated Men&#8217;s Wear Retailers to consolidate and systematize the commercial promotion.<sup><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Father%27s_Day_(United_States)#cite_note-11\">[11]<\/a><\/sup>&nbsp;Americans resisted the holiday at first, perceiving it as just&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hallmark_holiday\">an attempt by merchants to replicate the commercial success<\/a>&nbsp;of Mother&#8217;s Day, and newspapers frequently featured cynical and sarcastic attacks and jokes.<sup><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Father%27s_Day_(United_States)#cite_note-12\">[12]<\/a><\/sup>&nbsp;But the trade groups did not give up: they kept promoting it and even incorporated the jokes into their adverts, and they eventually succeeded.<sup><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Father%27s_Day_(United_States)#cite_note-13\">[13]<\/a><\/sup>&nbsp;By the mid-1980s, the Father&#8217;s Council wrote that &#8220;(&#8230;) [Father&#8217;s Day] has become a Second Christmas for all the men&#8217;s gift-oriented industries<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>History Father&#8217;s Day was inaugurated in the United States in the early 20th century to complement&nbsp;Mother&#8217;s Day&nbsp;in celebrating fathers, fathering, and fatherhood. Father&#8217;s Day was founded in&nbsp;Spokane,&nbsp;Washington, at the&nbsp;YMCA&nbsp;in 1910 by&nbsp;Sonora Smart Dodd, who was born in&nbsp;Arkansas.[3]&nbsp;Its first celebration was in the Spokane YMCA on June 19, 1910.[3][4]&nbsp;Her father, the&nbsp;Civil War&nbsp;veteran William Jackson Smart, was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":4249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[46],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/croswellpresbyterian.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/croswellpresbyterian.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/croswellpresbyterian.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/croswellpresbyterian.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/croswellpresbyterian.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1052"}],"version-history":[{"count":58,"href":"https:\/\/croswellpresbyterian.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4250,"href":"https:\/\/croswellpresbyterian.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052\/revisions\/4250"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/croswellpresbyterian.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/croswellpresbyterian.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/croswellpresbyterian.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/croswellpresbyterian.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}