The first Mother’s Day church service was held in 1908 and it became an American national holiday in 1914. It’s natural to assume a Father’s Day soon followed, ensuring that both parents received the recognition they rightfully deserved. However, this was not the case. Father’s Day was first celebrated in 1910, and it was only established as a national holiday in 1972 – 58 years after its maternal counterpart! The story behind Father’s Day is one worth telling, a development largely stemming from the advocacy of one woman.

Born in Arkansas in 1882, Sonora Smart Dodd is said to have had the idea for Father’s Day while listening to a Mother’s Day sermon with her dad. William Jackson Smart, a Civil War veteran, had raised Sonora and her five brothers as a single father, and she believed there should be a day in his honour. To achieve this, she spoke to the YMCA of Spokane, Washington, and the Ministerial Alliance, proposing that Father’s Day should fall on June 5 – her dad’s birthday. The organisations endorsed the idea, but difficulties caused the date to be pushed back two weeks, to June 19, 1910.

As the event was gradually embraced across the country, then-president Woodrow Wilson sanctioned the idea in 1913 and visited Spokane to participate in 1916. US senator Margaret Chase Smith introduced a bill in 1957, stating “to single out just one of our two parents and omit the other is the most grievous insult imaginable”. Even then, it was Richard Nixon in 1972 who finally made it official.

Considering the effort required to have this date recognised, you may now be asking why Australians celebrate Father’s Day in September. While we have Mother’s Day at the same time as the United States, there’s a three-month discrepancy for dads. Some believe this can be explained by our busy annual calendar – with a number of public holidays landing in April and June, and the Christmas rush waiting at the end of the year, it makes sense that the most convenient time for a Father’s Day would be in the first month of Spring.

To all the dads in our puzzling community – thank you!

Happy Father’s Day and happy puzzling!