When is Father's Day? Here's when it falls in 2025, history of why we celebrate dads in June
Mother's Day in the U.S. has come and gone, but another important day for parents is coming up quickly.
Like Mother's Day, Father's Day always falls on a particular Sunday in June and isn't tied to a calendar date. Here's when Father's Day 2025 happens in June and how the holiday began in the U.S.
Father's Day falls on Sunday, June 15, 2025.
Father's Day always falls on the third Sunday of June, which means the calendar date changes every year.
Mother's Day came first, and actually inspired Father's Day. According to History.com, the commercialized Mother's Day we know and celebrate in the U.S. today began in 1908, but its origins can be traced all the way back to the mid-1800s.
'The 'Mother's Day' we celebrate today has its origins in the peace-and-reconciliation campaigns of the post-Civil War era. During the 1860s, at the urging of activist Ann Reeves Jarvis, one divided West Virginia town celebrated 'Mother's Work Days' that brought together the mothers of Confederate and Union soldiers …' History.com says.
'In 1909, 45 states observed the day, and in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson approved a resolution that made the second Sunday in May a holiday in honor of 'that tender, gentle army, the mothers of America.''
But Father's Day took a little while longer to get off the ground, due to gender norms of the time. According to the Old Farmer's Almanac and Lawrence R. Samuel, author of 'American Fatherhood: A Cultural History," 'Men had a different role in the family during the first half of that century. It was patriarchal, so they felt that a special day to exalt fatherhood was a rather silly idea, when it was mothers who were underappreciated.'
It wasn't until 1972, under President Richard Nixon, that Congress passed an act officially making Father's Day a national holiday. But the first Father's Day celebration can be traced all the way back to 1908, around the same time Mother's Day kicked off in the U.S.
'The first known Father's Day service occurred in Fairmont, West Virginia, on July 5, 1908, after hundreds of men died in the worst mining accident in U.S. history,' the Old Farmer's Almanac says. But the observance didn't become an annual or nationally observed event.
A year later, Sonora Smart Dodd, a 27-year-old in Spokane, Washington, was inspired by Mother's Day and came up with the idea to set aside a day in June to celebrate dads.
'She proposed June 5, her father's birthday, but the ministers chose the third Sunday in June so that they would have more time after Mother's Day (the second Sunday in May) to prepare their sermons,' the almanac says.
'On June 19, 1910, the first Father's Day events commenced: Sonora delivered presents to handicapped fathers, boys from the YMCA decorated their lapels with fresh-cut roses (red for living fathers, white for the deceased), and the city's ministers devoted their homilies to fatherhood.'
The first bill to make Father's Day a holiday was presented to Congress just a few years later in 1913, but didn't pass.
Eight years later, President Calvin Coolidge signed a resolution in favor of establishing a Father's Day and in 1966, President Lyndon Johnson signed an executive order dictating that the holiday would be celebrated on the third Sunday of June. In 1972, Congress approved an act to make it a national holiday, under Nixon.
This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: History of Father's Day in the U.S.: When the day for dads falls in 2025
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
18 minutes ago
- Yahoo
For the pups, Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin hopes food bill finds a way
WASHINGTON — There's a wide divide between Republicans and Democrats in Congress. Maybe dogs can bridge the gap? Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, will reintroduce a bill on Wednesday that would allow pet stores to donate expired food and kibble to animal shelters. Rep. Young Kim, a California Republican, will join as its Republican sponsor. The legislation's Senate companion is expected to be reintroduced by Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Georgia Democrat, and Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican. 'Every day, viable pet food goes to waste and blankets, crates and other supplies end up in the trash,' Raskin told The Baltimore Sun in a statement. 'Our legislation helps suppliers and people donate leftover food and supplies rather than toss them out. I'm glad to partner with Rep. Kim to ensure perfectly good pet supplies go to shelter animals in need.' Appropriately titled the Bring Animals Relief and Kibble (BARK) Act, the idea originated from a constituent after she spent years watching an employer dump millions of pounds of pet food in the garbage, rather than donating it to shelters, for fear of potential litigation. 'We're really hoping we can get this thing passed,' Sally Tom, a Silver Spring resident, said. 'It's kind of a no-brainer.' Congress is full of common-sense solutions that are rarely implemented. Thousands of bills are introduced each session, and most of them never receive a vote on the House floor. That's particularly the case when a bill is introduced by a lawmaker in the minority party, like Raskin. But his office remains optimistic, despite the less-than-ideal circumstances the bill faces, that it can be passed this session. 'The bill has strong bipartisan support,' an office spokesperson said. 'We expect to add more co-sponsors of both parties to the bill once we introduce.' The legislation has a few things in its favor. It already has the backing of two key Republicans — a frontline House member in Kim and an influential senator in Tillis. It would now function as a standalone law, differing from previous versions that would have amended a current law. And, most importantly, it concerns man's best friend. Who doesn't love dogs? 'It's helping shelter animals get food and supplies that they need,' the spokesperson said. 'Especially at a time where shelters across the country are facing rising operation costs, it should be bipartisan common sense.' The current atmosphere of the Republican-controlled Congress (specifically the House) means getting anything passed is an uphill battle — even legislation on dogs. While President Donald Trump has blitzed through hundreds of executive orders, the House has hardly done anything since passing a government funding bill in March. Until recently, it had been bogged down with a large spending bill that contained most of Trump's legislative agenda. The House passed the bill in late May. 'Why is it not already passed? Because this is the U.S. Congress,' Tillis told The Sun, adding that he's optimistic it passes this session. 'I've seen I don't know how many bills like that take two or three Congresses to get done. It's just a matter of timing, prioritization. People are distracted by other things, so it's on me and the co-sponsors to keep pressing the issue.' It's possible that the Senate could eventually pass the bill via unanimous consent, if no member objects on the floor. The bill would still have to pass the House and be signed by the president to become law. Tom, 75, loves dogs. She has a five-year-old Golden Retriever named Angus and previously cared for three rescues — Robbie, Meggie and Mackenzie. It bothered her to see large quantities of seemingly OK pet food being thrown away at the store where she worked. 'And when I asked the manager, 'Why do we throw all this stuff away when it's perfectly usable?'' the manager told her it was either past the sell-by date or returned, Tom said. In either case, they couldn't sell it. Tom asked about donating it to a shelter. Her manager said that if they did donate it, and an animal happened to get sick, the store could be sued by the shelter or rescue group that received it. 'So it was a liability issue,' Tom said. But a lawyer friend who previously worked on Capitol Hill suggested that Congress could fix that. The friend cited a 1990s law that protected restaurants and caterers who donate food to people in need. 'If it can be done for human food, certainly it can be done for animals,' Tom said. In February of 2020, she visited Raskin. His staff crafted the bill, and Raskin introduced it for the first time. 'The idea of all these millions of pounds of kibble — not to mention everything else — going in a landfill every year is just horrifying,' Tom said. ---------------
San Francisco Chronicle
43 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
A Virginia museum found 4 Confederate soldiers' remains. It's trying to identify them
WILLIAMSBURG, Va. (AP) — Archaeologists in Virginia were excavating the grounds of a building that stored gunpowder during the American Revolution when they uncovered the eye sockets of a human skull. The team carefully unearthed four skeletons, including one with a bullet in the spine, and three amputated legs. They quickly surmised the bones were actually from the Civil War, when a makeshift hospital operated nearby and treated gravely wounded Confederate soldiers. The archaeologists work at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, a museum that owns the land and focuses on the city's 18th century history. They're now trying to identify human remains from the 19th century, a rare endeavor that will include searching for living descendants and requesting swabs of DNA. The museum has recovered enough genetic material from the men's teeth for possible matches. But the prospect of identifying them emerged only after the team located handwritten lists in an archive that name the soldiers in that hospital. 'It is the key,' said Jack Gary, Colonial Williamsburg's executive director of archaeology. 'If these men were found in a mass grave on a battlefield, and there was no other information, we probably wouldn't be trying to do this.' The archaeologists have narrowed the possible identities to four men who served in regiments from Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina and Virginia. The museum is withholding the names as the work continues. Meanwhile, the remains were reinterred Tuesday at a Williamsburg cemetery where Confederate soldiers from the same battle are buried. 'Everyone deserves dignity in death,' Gary said. 'And being stored in a drawer inside a laboratory does not do that.' 'Shockingly costly for both sides' The soldiers fought in the Battle of Williamsburg, a bloody engagement on May 5, 1862. The fighting was part of the Peninsula Campaign, a major Union offensive that tried to end the war quickly. The campaign's failure that summer, stalling outside the Confederate capital of Richmond, informed President Abraham Lincoln's decision to end slavery. In his first inaugural address, Lincoln said he intended to reunite the nation with slavery intact in the Southern states, while halting its westward expansion, said Timothy Orr, a military historian and professor at Old Dominion University. But Lincoln realized after the campaign that he needed a more radical approach, Orr said. And while the president faced political pressure for emancipation, freeing people who were enslaved served as 'another weapon to defeat the Confederacy.' 'He becomes convinced that slavery is feeding the Confederate war effort,' Orr said. 'It had to be taken away.' Bigger and bloodier battles followed Williamsburg, Orr said, but it was 'shockingly costly for both sides." Roughly 14,600 Union soldiers fought about 12,500 Confederates, Carol Kettenburg Dubbs wrote in her 2002 book, 'Defend This Old Town.' The number of Union killed, wounded, captured or missing was 2,283. The Confederate figure was 1,870. The fighting moved north, while a Union brigade occupied the southern city. Confederate soldiers too wounded for travel were placed in homes and a church, which was converted into a hospital. A surgeon from New York treated them, while local women visited the church, Dubbs wrote. One woman noted in her diary on May 26 that there were 'only 18 out of 61 left.' Their arms were crossed When the remains were discovered in 2023, they were aligned east-west in the Christian tradition, said Gary, the archaeologist. Their arms were crossed. The careful burial indicates they were not dumped into a mass grave, Gary said. Those who died in the battle were almost immediately placed in trenches and later reinterred at a cemetery. The men were not in uniform, said Eric Schweickart, a staff archaeologist. Some were in more comfortable clothes, based on artifacts that included buttons and a trouser buckle. One soldier had two $5 gold coins from 1852. Another had a toothbrush made of animal bone and a snuff bottle, used for sniffing tobacco. The bullet in the soldier's spine was a Minié ball, a common round of Civil War ammunition. The foot of one amputated leg also contained a Minié ball. Bones in a second severed leg were shattered. 'We want it be ironclad' As the team researched the battle, they learned of the lists of hospitalized soldiers, said Evan Bell, an archaeological lab technician. The lists were likely copied from Union records by the women who visited the wounded. The documents were with a local family's papers at William & Mary, a university nearby. The lists became the project's Rosetta stone, providing names and regiments of more than 60 soldiers. They included dates of death and notes indicating amputations. The archaeologists eliminated soldiers on the lists who survived or lost an extremity. The four skeletons had all of their limbs. Death dates were key because three men were buried together, allowing the team to pinpoint three soldiers who died around the same time. William & Mary's Institute for Historical Biology examined the remains and estimated their ages. The youngest was between 15 and 19, the oldest between 35 and 55. The estimates helped match names to enlistment records, census data and Union prisoner of war documents. The soldiers' remains and the amputated limbs were buried in their own stainless steel boxes in a concrete vault, Gary said. If descendants are confirmed, they can move their ancestor to another burial site. The identification effort will continue for another several months at least and will include extensive genealogy work, Gary said. Using only DNA tests on remains from the 1800s can risk false positives because 'you start becoming related to everyone.' 'We want it to be ironclad,' he said.
Miami Herald
43 minutes ago
- Miami Herald
Trump's new office of ‘Western values' will be a showcase of double standards
The Trump administration's plan to create a State Department office of 'Democracy and Western values' sounds like a great idea — on paper. But given the administration's recent actions abroad and at home, this new bureau is likely to have less than zero credibility. According to a 130-page report to Congress by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the proposed office is part of a State Department overhaul that aims to cut 3,448 jobs. The shake-up would scrap most of the existing Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, merging its remnants into a smaller office led by a deputy assistant secretary of state for democracy and Western values. But based on the Trump administration's track record, this new department is shaping up to be a textbook case of political double standards. Expect plenty of finger-wagging at Cuba, Venezuela and Iran — which is fine and necessary — while turning a blind eye to the destruction of democratic institutions in Mexico, El Salvador or Hungary. What's worse, it may echo Trump's praise for some Trump-friendly dictatorships, such as Saudi Arabia, or near-dictatorships like El Salvador. During his visit to Saudi Arabia in March, Trump praised its de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as an 'incredible' and 'great' leader. The U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in 2021 that bin Salman had approved the operation that killed Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. In recent months, Trump has also rolled out the red carpet for El Salvador's authoritarian president, Nayib Bukele, describing him as a 'remarkable president' and showering him with praise at the White House. While Bukele is popular for slashing El Salvador's crime rates, human rights groups — and, until Trump took office Jan. 20, even the U.S. government — have accused him of widespread abuses and bending the law to seize absolute power. Recently, Bukele passed a law cracking down on human rights, pro-democracy and anti-corruption groups that receive foreign funding. His government has also stepped up arrests of critics. As a headline in The Economist magazine put it this week, 'First he busted gangs. Now Nayib Bukele busts critics.' The Trump administration has also been shy about criticizing Mexico's slow-motion slide into an elected autocracy. On June 1, Mexico held controversial elections to elect judges and Supreme Court justices by direct vote — a far cry from the merit-based appointment system used in most countries. Critics fear — rightly — that the ruling Morena party rigged the voting process to seize the judiciary and give the President Claudia Sheinbaum control over all branches of government. Only 13% of Mexican voters went to the polls. Furthermore, the Trump administration is slashing U.S. aid for human rights and press freedom groups worldwide, including independent pro-democracy websites in Venezuela and Cuba. At home, the administration has little to show when it comes to its defense of 'Western values.' Is it consistent with 'Western values' to try to deport hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, Cubans, Nicaraguans and Haitians who are legally in the United States under Temporary Protected Status (TPS), often separating them from their U.S.-born children? Is the United States really upholding 'Western values' when its president ignores court rulings, as has happened recently in several immigration cases? Can America really preach about 'Western values' when its president said that there were 'very fine people on both sides' after a group of neo-Nazis clashed with protesters at the infamous 'Unite the Right' rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017? Unless the Trump administration stops praising autocrats and shows respect for America's own constitution, the new 'Democracy and Western Values' office will quickly become a joke. Don't be surprised if it's soon dubbed the Office of Selective Outrage. Its acronym, OSO, means 'bear' in Spanish, which would be fitting for an office that hibernates whenever democracy is under threat. Don't miss the 'Oppenheimer Presenta' TV show on Sundays at 9 pm E.T. on CNN en Español. Blog:
