Celebrate Life - Mother's Day, Father's Day 2010

How does your church celebrate Mother's Day and Father's Day?  Please take a minute to share so that other congregations may find a new or different way to celebrate these special days.

Mother's Day - Sunday, May 9, 2010
Father's Day - Sunday, June 20, 2010

Here is some history on how the days we honor our mothers and fathers came to be.  (as reported on WIKIPEDIA)

Mother's Day
In its present form, Mother's Day was established by Anna Marie Jarvis, following the death of her mother Ann Jarvis on May 9, 1905, with the help of a Philadelphia merchant called John Wanamaker. A small service was held in 12 May 1907 in the Andrew's Methodist Episcopal Church in Grafton, West Virginia, where Anna's mother had been teaching Sunday school. But the first "official" service was in 10 May 1908 in the same church, accompanied by a larger ceremony in the Wanamaker Auditorium in the Wanamaker's store on Philadelphia. She then campaigned to establish Mother's Day as a U.S. national holiday, and later as an international holiday.

The holiday was declared officially by the state of West Virginia in 1910, and the rest of states followed quickly. On May 8, 1914, the U.S. Congress passed a law designating the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day and requesting a proclamation. On May 9, 1914, President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation, declaring the first national Mother's Day, as a day for American citizens to show the flag in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war.

In 1934, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved a stamp commemorating the holiday.

In May 2008, the U.S. House of Representatives voted twice on a resolution commemorating Mother's Day, the first one being unanimous so that all congressmen would be on record showing support for Mother's Day.
The Grafton's church, where the first celebration was held, is now the International Mother's Day Shrine and is a National Historic Landmark.

Father's Day
The first observance of Father's Day is believed to have been held on June 19, 1910 through the efforts of Sonora Dodd of Spokane, Washington.
Sonora Smart Dodd thought independently of the holiday one Sunday in 1909 while listening to a Mother's Day sermon at the Central Methodist Episcopal Church at Spokane. She wanted a celebration that honored fathers that were like her own father, William Smart. He was a Civil War veteran, his wife died when Sonora was 16 and he had to take care of all six children.

On June 19, 1910, she arranged a tribute for her father in Spokane. She had previously enlisted  the help of the Spokane Ministerial association, and young members of the YMCA went to church wearing roses: a red rose to honor a living father, and a white rose to honor a deceased one. Dodd traveled through the city in a closed carriage, carrying gifts to shut-in fathers. She was the first to solicit the idea of having an official Father's Day observance to honor all fathers.

It took many years to make the holiday official.  In spite of support from the YWCA, the YMCA and churches, it ran the risk of disappearing from the calendar. Where Mother's Day was met with enthusiasm, Father's Day was met with laughter. The holiday was gathering attention slowly, but for the wrong reasons. It was the target of much satire, parody and derision, including jokes from the local Spokane newspaper The Spokesman-Review. Many people saw it as just the first step in filling the calendar with mindless promotions like "Grandparents' Day", "Professional Secretaries' Day", etc., all the way down to "National Clean Your Desk Day."

A bill was introduced in 1913. In 1916 President Woodrow Wilson went to Spokane to speak in a Father's Day celebration and wanted to make it official, but the Congress resisted, fearing that it would be commercialized.  US President Calvin Coolidge recommended in 1924 that the celebration be held, and a national committee was formed in the 1930s by trade groups in order to legitimize the holiday.  In 1957 Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith wrote a proposal accusing the congress of ignoring fathers for 40 years while honoring mothers, thus "singling out just one of our own parents". In 1966 President Lyndon Johnson made a proclamation for the third Sunday of June to be Father's Day, but it wasn't made an official national holiday until President Nixon made a proclamation in 1972.

Blessings,
Steve
Logos Christian Bookstore