It is almost Father’s Day — well, at least it almost is here in the U. S. and some other world countries, where we take the time to honor our dads on the third Sunday in June every year. But how did this holiday come about?

History of Father’s Day

In the early part of the last century, Mother’s Day became a recognized holiday in America thanks to the many-years campaign of a West Virginia woman named Anna Jarvis to honor her mother and as a celebration of motherhood, in general.

Hearing about Mother’s Day in a sermon at her church, Sonora Smart Dodd, of Washington state, was inspired to start a similar tradition for fathers. She believed that men like her own dad should be recognized and honored for their roles as parents. Dodd likely felt very strongly about this because her father, a veteran of the Civil War, raised her and her five siblings on his own after their mother died in childbirth.

She thought an ideal day would be the birthday of her beloved dad, which was June 5. But that was not enough time for the pastor she enlisted to help her spread the word about a day honoring dad’s to get prepared. The first Father’s Day then became the 19th of June, 1910.

But for many years, Father’s Day was almost considered to be a joke, the object of laughter and ridicule. If not for the support of many churches as well as the YMCA, Father’s Day might have vanished altogether. Even the support of some government officials, including President Woodrow Wilson and President Calvin Coolidge, failed to make it a recognized for many more years. President Richard Nixon made Father’s Day a national holiday in 1972, 62 long years later. (But it was actually President Lyndon B. Johnson who designated in a 1966 proclamation that the holiday should be celebrated on the third Sunday in June.)

Father’s Day in Other Countries

Father’s Day around the world is sprinkled around the calendar, from February 23 in Russia to December 26 in Bulgaria, and nearly every month in between. In a few countries, such as Spain, Italy and Portugal, Father’s Day is on March 19 based on an old Catholic tradition. But the American date is the most common. So let’s not forget any foreign fathers we know; learn how to say Happy Father’s Day in Spanish or how to say Happy Father’s Day in Portuguese.