When Is Father's Day 2017? How It All Began in America
In the United States, Father's Day is always celebrated every year on the third Sunday of June. And in 2017, this special day that is allotted for honoring and thanking all father figures in the country falls on June 18.
According to The Old Farmer's Almanac, the history of celebrating Father's Day can be traced back to more than a hundred years ago, when the first service in honor of the event was held at the Williams Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church in Fairmont, West Virginia on July 5, 1908.
The service was organized at the request and through the efforts of Grace Golden Clayton, whose father had died in 1896. She also wanted the service to honor and remember the more than 200 fathers whose lives were lost in a mining explosion the previous year. The tragedy was considered to be the worst mining disaster in the history of the United States, and it left around 1,000 kids without a father.
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However, the Fairmont service honoring did not become an annual event. It was only through the proposal of Sonora Louise Smart Dodd to the Spokane Ministerial Association and the YMCA that the first of many Father's Day events was observed in Spokane, Washington in 1910. It became an annual event there, and eventually, neighboring towns had copied the tradition and organized their own celebrations.
In spite of the widespread support of observing Father's Day, it wasn't until in1972 that President Richard Nixon signed a law declaring that Father's Day is to be celebrated every year on the third Sunday of June. Since then, it has become an official national holiday in the United States.
North America is not the only continent that observes and celebrates Father's Day, but the date they follow is not always the same. For example, in Catholic countries like Spain and Portugal, the event is annually observed on the Feast of St. Joseph, which always falls on March 19th.
Taiwan's Father's Day is celebrated on Aug. 8, or the eighth day of the eighth month, as the term "Papa" in Mandarin Chinese sounds similar to the pronunciation of the number eight. Thailand, on the other hand, celebrates it on the birthday of their king.
