ASK SUE-BELINDA

THANK you to Jess who emailed me to ask about Fathers’ Day. Jess asked two terrific questions: (1) should Fathers’ Day be written with and ‘s apostrophe’ or an ‘apostrophe s’; and (2) whose idea was it to celebrate Fathers’ Day?

Well, first thing is first as my Nanna advised, so let’s look at the apostrophe placement. Whose ‘Day’ will we be celebrating on the weekend? We’ll be celebrating a day for all the fathers – Dads, Daddys – whatever it is you call your Dad. Now because there is more than one father being celebrated, we need to use the plural form ‘fathers’.

It their special day, so for all intents and purposes, they will ‘own’ the day. To show ownership by a plural, you need only add an apostrophe after the ‘s’. (To show ownership by a singular item you must add ‘apostrophe s’ so that the column of Sue-belinda becomes Sue-belinda’s column.) Thus it becomes Fathers’ Day. Of course, if you’d like to select another day and date on which to celebrate your Dad and your Dad alone, then you could declare that day to be Father’s Day as it would be solely for the celebration of your father.

Right … on we go and the answer to Jess’ second question (by the way, you never have three same letters in a row in English so even though Jess is singular, we would not add ‘apostrophe s’ to denote her ownership of the question) – when did Fathers Day begin?

Those of you who are regular readers of this column of curiosities, may remember that Mothers’ Day has been celebrated on the second Sunday in May since 1908, while Mothering Sunday, a religious observance celebrated half way through Lent, has existed since the eighth century.

Fathers’ Day honours the day-to-day life and contribution of fathers and those who accept the responsibility of paternal bonds. Throughout the Christian northern hemisphere there has been a celebration on March 19 on Saint Joseph’s Day. St Joseph raised Jesus with Mary.

While the Bible never mentions Joseph as Jesus’s father, referring only to ‘Mary’s son’, it is accepted that Joseph raised Jesus and treated him in the same way as he might a son of his flesh and blood. The Catholic Church regards St Joseph’s Day as a feast day. It’s not so much a Fathers’ Day honouring our Dads, but a Father’s Day honouring the fathers of the Christian Church.

The Eastern Orthodox Church, which most know as simply the Orthodox Churches, celebrate the second Sunday before the Nativity (Christmas) as ‘Sunday of Forefathers’. The date generally falls somewhere between December 11 and 17.

This celebrates the contribution of male forebears to the church and to families.

While many cultures celebrate some form of Father’s Day or Forebears Day, the selection of a date on which to do so, seems only a ‘serving suggestion’ and dates vary wildly from March, May, June and all the way to September – in fact I found no fewer than 17 different dates. Here in Australia, we are one of only four countries that celebrate Father’s Day on the first Sunday in September.

The next logical question must be ‘Whose bright idea was it anyway?’

In 1909 an American woman, Grace Golden Clayton was saddened by a huge mining accident in West Virginia that took the lives of more than 300 men leaving more than 1000 children without fathers.

Her own father was one of the lives lost. She proposed that a day be set aside to honour all fathers in all walks of life to thank them for providing for their families and all that they gave to family life. Try as she might, the idea did not gain traction and many suggested its association with such an enduring tragedy made it all but impossible to celebrate. The following year, 1909, Sonora Smart Dodd was inspired to ask the Spokane Ministerial Association to give its support to a ‘day on which all fathers might receive recognition and thanks in much the same vein as Mothers’ Day’. Sonora and her five brothers were raised by their father as their mother had died in childbirth to a sixth Dodd child, Marshall, who survived.

William Jackson Smart, Sonora’s father, was everything to his children and by all accounts they loved him dearly. Together they attended church and one Sunday their minister told them of this new celebration ‘Mothers’ Day’. Sonora thought that fathers too should be recognised and suggested William Smart’s birthday as a suitable date on which these celebrations could take place.

In time, Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States heard of the celebrations and telegraphed Spokane to give his recognition and support to the concept. In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a formal presidential proclamation declaring the third Sunday of June as Fathers’ Day and in 1972, President Nixon established a permanent national observance of Fathers’ Day for the third Sunday of June. Sonora

Dodd, then aged 92, was honoured at the 1972 World Expo held in Spokane.

So the modern form of Father’s Day is a very new invention, in fact, Australians only began hearing about it through the Vietnam War and successive war games and combined military exercises through which they came into contact with serving American fathers who spoke with fondness of the celebrations they were missing. Australian fathers thought that this sound like a fine celebration and brought word of it back to their families. Soon Fathers’ Day became popular here also. The rest, is, as they say, history Jess!