Unlike Mother's Day that can be traced back to ancient Rome and Greece, Father's Day is a relatively new holiday in comparison. In 1909 while celebrating mass on Mother's Day, a young lady by the name Sonora Dodd was thinking of her father. Her father, William Smart, was a Civil War veteran. After his wife passed away giving birth to their sixth child it became his responsibility to raise Sonora and her 5 siblings. Thinking back to her youth Sonora remembered the love and nurturing she and her siblings received from their father while growing up on a farm in the state of Washington.
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On June 19, 1910 Sonora and her family celebrated Father's Day to honor her father whose birthday was in June. It was from this humble beginning that Father's Day was on the road to become a national holiday. In 1924 President Calvin Coolidge supported the idea of a national Father's Day but it wasn't until 1966 that President Lyndon Johnson declared that the third Sunday in June would officially be Father's Day by signing a presidential proclamation. Richard Nixon signed it into law in 1972.
Father's Day is a holiday that is celebrated all over the world. From Guatemala to Bangladesh to Ireland and other countries father's are honored and feted. Though the United States and some other countries celebrate Father's Day on the third Sunday of June most other countries have different days designated for this holiday.
Honoring your father, your mother and family is something we should all do, not only on those special days that are designated by law or culture, but everyday should be a day of love and respect. Honoring your mother and father is considered the most important commandment in the Christian bible. Other holy books make mention of a sacred decree of honoring our parents such as the Talmud of the Hebrew faith, Upanishads and Veda of Hinduism, the Koran of Islam, these and other holy books hold these beliefs of family and love.
