Father's Day

 Remember your father this coming weekend: Father's Day this year is June 17.

Sometimes time we give another is the most magickal gift we could ever give.

(The following are not my words: I read this article many years ago and have since lost the citation).

Every third Sunday in June, sons, daughters, wives and mothers across America show their respect and admiration for the fathers in their lives. This year, you can remind your father that he owes his thanks for the creation of Father's Day to a woman: Sonora Smart Dodd.

According to the story, Dodd was listening to a Mother's Day sermon in 1909 when the idea of a national holiday honoring fathers first occurred to her. She was thinking about the thanks she owed her own father, widower William Smart, who raised Dodd and her five siblings single-handedly in Spokane, Washington. Although Calvin Coolidge and Woodrow Wilson reportedly supported the idea, it wasn't until Richard Nixon signed a presidential resolution in 1974 that Dodd's idea came to fruition. Since, then, Father's Day has been celebrated in America right around the time of Mr. Smart's birthday.

Greeting cards are the most popular Father's Day gift; in fact, Father's Day is the fourth largest card sending occasion of the year, with around 90 million Father's Day cards sent annually. Like the United States, England and India both celebrate Father's Day on the third Sunday in June. Belgian peres are feted on the second Sunday of the month; the Spanish thank their padres on March 19 (also known as St. Joseph's Day).