Hey there, Moms and Dads!
Today is a very special day. What makes it so special, you ask? It’s special because it’s all about you! Happy Parents’ Day, Parents! Today celebrates you: that proud, loving, and often times very tired group—the parents of our world! Though it may be a little hard for some of us to admit it at times, at some point in our lives our parents were most likely the most important people in it.
You’d think this day has been celebrated all throughout history since moms and dad have been around since…FOREVER, but actually it came around in the much more recent past. Its interesting history goes back only to the 1920’s or so when one Ms. Sonora Smart Dodd from Spokane fought to make an equivalent to Mother’s Day for male parents—Father’s Day.
As was covered on the previous Father’s Day post, most fathers confronted the idea of Father’s Day unfavorably, displeased with its celebration of a domesticated male figure being gifted with flowers and other frills. One response was a movement that lasted about a decade that tried to get rid of both Mother’s AND Father’s Day entirely to make just one, unified Parents’ Day.
Parents’ Day was fought for with the rationale that both parents should be respected and admired equally, however, the Great Depression put an end to the fight as retailers did their best to promote ‘manly’ gifts like neckties, hats, and golf clubs for Father’s Day. With that, Father’s Day won the battle.
It took nearly 65 years before anything happened with Parent’s Day, until 1994 when President Clinton noted that Mother’s Day landed on the second Sunday of May and Father’s Day on the third Sunday of July. So following suit, he decided that the fourth Sunday in July had ought to be Parents’ Day.
From everyone at Everything Summer Camp, happy Parents’ Day! As always, thanks for reading.
- John