Father's Day

JPK Huson 1863

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
Joined
Feb 14, 2012
Location
Central Pennsylvania
Seems to me there are always folks far too willing to weigh in on topics ranging from Father's Day to whether or not oatmeal cookies have to have raisins to consider themselves oatmeal cookies.

It's a nice day if someone wants it to be a nice day- and an awful lot of American do. Yay Dad!


Origins of Father’s Day

The campaign to celebrate the nation’s fathers did not meet with the same enthusiasm–perhaps because, as one florist explained, “fathers haven’t the same sentimental appeal that mothers have.” On July 5, 1908, a West Virginia church sponsored the nation’s first event explicitly in honor of fathers, a Sunday sermon in memory of the 362 men who had died in the previous December’s explosions at the Fairmont Coal Company mines in Monongah, but it was a one-time commemoration and not an annual holiday. The next year, a Spokane, Washington woman named Sonora Smart Dodd, one of six children raised by a widower, tried to establish an official equivalent to Mother’s Day for male parents. She went to local churches, the YMCA, shopkeepers and government officials to drum up support for her idea, and she was successful: Washington State celebrated the nation’s first statewide Father’s Day on July 19, 1910. Slowly, the holiday spread. In 1916, President Wilson honored the day by using telegraph signals to unfurl a flag in Spokane when he pressed a button in Washington, D.C. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge urged state governments to observe Father’s Day. However, many men continued to disdain the day. As one historian writes, they “scoffed at the holiday’s sentimental attempts to domesticate manliness with flowers and gift-giving, or they derided the proliferation of such holidays as a commercial gimmick to sell more products–often paid for by the father himself.”

Father’s Day: Controversy and Commercialism
During the 1920s and 1930s, a movement arose to scrap Mother’s Day and Father’s Day altogether in favor of a single holiday, Parents’ Day. Every year on Mother’s Day, pro-Parents’ Day groups rallied in New York City’s Central Park–a public reminder, said Parents’ Day activist and radio performer Robert Spere, “that both parents should be loved and respected together.” Paradoxically, however, the Depression derailed this effort to combine and de-commercialize the holidays. Struggling retailers and advertisers redoubled their efforts to make Father’s Day a “second Christmas” for men, promoting goods such as neckties, hats, socks, pipes and tobacco, golf clubs and other sporting goods, and greeting cards. When World War II began, advertisers began to argue that celebrating Father’s Day was a way to honor American troops and support the war effort. By the end of the war, Father’s Day may not have been a federal holiday, but it was a national institution.
In 1972, in the middle of a hard-fought presidential re-election campaign, Richard Nixon signed a proclamation making Father’s Day a federal holiday at last. Today, economists estimate that Americans spend more than $1 billion each year on Father’s Day gifts.
http://www.history.com/topics/holidays/fathers-day

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Great pictures....check out that little boy smiling, first time I've seen one like that, oh uh don't mean to start a war (but I do have my hand on my knife) oatmeal cookies DO NOT have to have raisins either.....Take that, raisin eaters!

I am not a raisin eater myself. Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed the pictures, thanks for the opportunity. I also thought the one with the boy smiling is very interesting and unique for this time period. Brings some humanity behind the photograph.
 
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Wonder if I can slide some in as ' Era '- was thinking of another Raisin Eater I'll be missing badly Sunday. Heck- miss the man most days. The children in the photos are mine, grandchildren, not children since he never stopped stepping in when needed. Never. We just passed the 2 year mark since he left. Not that our family is at all unique- everyone here has said goodbye to someone. Some to both parents, some to one. When I get there, it's an intention to buttonhole whoever is in charge and lay some objections at His feet. This saying Goodbye thing is for the birds.

He was a heck of a Dad.
 
It's still bad, as you know. He was not at all big on Father's Day- thought it a made-up holiday so is somewhere fuming right now, being included in a Father's Day thread. Makes me smile- I'll hear about this! :smile:

Lee and son
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I LOVE this father. So, so pleasant and happy about his child. They all seem to be- something about this fellow.

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These are such wonderful photos! I especially like the last one with Dad and his five daughters. But why aren't the mothers in the pictures? Some of the faces on both father and child/children seem so sad that I can't help but think that some of these men, if not most, are probably widowers.
 
We didn't celebrate Fathers day at my house even though I am a father and soon to be granddad. I just felt it was more important to celebrate my wife birthday. Especially since it was a big un. 60. Every so often her birthday falls on fathers day.
 
Great pictures....check out that little boy smiling, first time I've seen one like that, oh uh don't mean to start a war (but I do have my hand on my knife) oatmeal cookies DO NOT have to have raisins either.....Take that, raisin eaters!
100% agreed. Oatmeal cookies are ruined by raisins (and everything else you put raisins in, for that matter). Chocolate, on the other hand, improves anything ... you should taste my 'improved' strawberry shortcake!

And, JPK, the pictures are all wonderful. How much more wonderful if they had all smiled! They look like somebody put raisins in their oatmeal cookies.
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100% agreed. Oatmeal cookies are ruined by raisins (and everything else you put raisins in, for that matter). Chocolate, on the other hand, improves anything ... you should taste my 'improved' strawberry shortcake!

And, JPK, the pictures are all wonderful. How much more wonderful if they had all smiled! They look like somebody put raisins in their oatmeal cookies.
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AH hahahahahaha! They were RUINED, absolutely ruined, all of them, may as well have had shriveled, dead flies in there. The Hatfield and McCoy feud? Raisins. Little known fact, the whole pig thing sounded more plausible. And we thought the war was over slavery.. ( OH Lord, someone is going to see that ... )

I like your chocolate theory. May have helped quell an awful lot of global unrest. Hmm. Worth a try, I LIKE it- they haven't had a great deal of success with World Peas.
 
These are such wonderful photos! I especially like the last one with Dad and his five daughters. But why aren't the mothers in the pictures? Some of the faces on both father and child/children seem so sad that I can't help but think that some of these men, if not most, are probably widowers.

Oh, Mother's Day will have our turn, no fear! :smile: I'd looked for specific ' Father' photos, was thrilled to find SO many- how wonderful! Just delightfully proves men were as soppy over their children 150 years ago as they remain today- and the softies to be counted on behind the scenes. Obviously- some awful exceptions then and now, the whole Dad-softy thing is iconic enough I'll bet a few of you are reading this right now. You big mushes. :smile:
 
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