On Sunday, June 15, we celebrate Father’s Day.
Do you have a special Father’s Day wish for your father?
If so, submit it as a comment on this article, and we could publish your Father’s Day wish in next week’s Benoni City Times.
Please give your father’s first name (or nickname) and surname and your own first name/s and surname.
Why we celebrate the day?
Father’s Day is a celebration honouring fathers and celebrating fatherhood, paternal bonds and the influence of fathers in society.
Many countries celebrate it on the third Sunday of June, though it is also celebrated widely on other days.
Father’s Day was created to complement Mother’s Day, a celebration that honours mothers and motherhood.
The day was inaugurated in the United States in the early 20th century, to celebrate fatherhood and male parenting.
Father’s Day was founded at the YMCA in Spokane, Washington, on June 19, 1910, by Sonora Smart Dodd, who was born in Arkansas.
Her father, the Civil War veteran William Jackson Smart, was a single parent who raised his six children there.
After hearing a sermon about Mother’s Day, in 1909, Dodd told her pastor that fathers should have a similar holiday honouring them.
Although she initially suggested June 5, her father’s birthday, the pastors did not have enough time to prepare their sermons and the celebration was deferred to the third Sunday of June. KP
