As Father’s day approaches, I’m reminded that every year, it’s common to hear people say things like “For those of you who are fathers, Happy Father’s Day!” or “Happy Father’s Day to all the fathers I know).  And of course, we hear similar things for Mother’s day.  It’s become a day to celebrate someone’s (often one’s own) fatherhood. 

This is not the spirit in which these holidays were instituted.  When Anna Jarvis campaigned for Mother’s Day and Sonora Scott Dodd created Father’s day (yes,  both days were created by women), they meant it to be a day to honor one’s mother or father. Not to celebrate one’s own motherhood or fatherhood.  In fact, Anna Jarvis did not even have children of her own!

Jarvis specifically noted that “Mother’s” should “be a singular possessive, for each family to honor its own mother, not a plural possessive commemorating all mothers in the world.”

So, what happened? The church happened.  Some strains of conservative Christians saw it as a way to push their agenda that the path that women should take is motherhood and not other pursuits.  So they used the holiday to celebrate motherhood instead.  And they were successful.  This irked Anna Jarvis so much that by the end of her life, she started campaigning for the holiday to end, now that its meeting had been so perverted.

To summarize: Happy Father’s Day to you if you have a father (or had one or had a father figure).  Appreciate your father and celebrate him! 

It’s not about your fatherhood. There is only one holiday in the year to celebrate yourself. And that is your birthday.  Every other holiday is to honor and celebrate someone else in your life.  Don’t bend it to suit your own purposes.