Book of Days

My dad’s got quite a few long standing jokes that he’s been telling since, oh… time immemorial. His favorite, though, is probably the joke he uses in reference to Father’s Day: He calls it “Jack Ass Day,” distinctly different from the way he thinks of Mother’s Day. A special day just for him is not something that sits comfortably for Dad, and so he takes shelter in humor.

The holiday itself has its roots in Mother’s Day traditions, and if you follow these Book of Days chapters, you’ll recall from last month how Anna Jarvis was the key figure in establishing Mother’s Day. Well, the Anna Jarvis of Father’s Day was Sonora Smart Dodd, who, after hearing a sermon about Anna Jarvis and her mission to establish a day honoring mothers, sought to do the same for fathers. This was in 1910 in Spokane, Washington, and the first Father’s Day celebration took place in Spokane that June, on the third Sunday, just as we celebrate it now.

Where Jarvis chose to battle the forces of commercialization for the holiday she championed, Dodd did not, and instead welcomed the commercialization of Father’s Day as a way to help establish the holiday, which was not gaining much traction on its own. The backing of trade groups worked, but it took time. The presidential proclamation designating the third Sunday of June as Father’s Day did not occur until Lyndon Johnson did it the honor in 1966, and it was Richard Nixon who made Father’s Day a permanent national holiday in 1972.

Sonora Smart Dodd died in Spokane in 1978, and for all we know, she died content and at peace with her creation, which was not the case with Anna Jarvis, who spent her life and her fortune battling the commercialization of Mother’s Day. And maybe there’s a lesson there for all of us: We create things, we nurture them and give them wings, and they become what they will. We can either fight them and grow weary trying to change them into something they are not, or we can accept them as they are and love them no matter what.

To my dad and to all the fathers out there: Happy Father’s Day.

That’s me and that’s my dad, in a photobooth somewhere, circa 1968. Not much has changed: He still has a great head of hair, and my haircuts continue to be goofy.