Father's Day took longer to catch on than Mother's Day. The history behind the June holiday

We celebrated the mothers and mother figures in our life this past weekend. Soon it will be time to celebrate the fathers.

Like Mother's Day, Father's Day started off as a local tradition that soon blossomed into the holiday that we know now. But there is a tragic reason that the first known Father's Day actually occurred in the United States.

The first known Father’s Day service occurred in Fairmont, West Virginia, on July 5, 1908. It was to honor the hundreds of men that died in the worst mining accident in U.S. history, according to the Farmer's Almanac. The event was for the local community to come together after the incident and didn't become an annual event.

It would be decades until it became an official holiday celebrating and honoring all those with the moniker of father.

Which came first Mother's Day or Father's Day?

Mother's Day did.

The first Mother's Day celebration happened in a Methodist church in Grafton, W. Va., also in 1908 thanks to Anna Jarvis. It wasn't officially recognized as a holiday in the rest of the U.S until 1914, according to History.com.

Who came up with Father's Day?

Father's Day had several incarnations before becoming an official holiday like Mother's Day.

The first known event in West Virginia in 1908 was proposed by Grace Golden Clayton. A year later, on the opposite side of the country Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, Washington, proposed the idea of a day to honor the fathers of the community after being inspired by Jarvis and her single father who raised her and five brothers after her mother died in child birth, according to the Farmer's Almanac.

The 27 year old's idea also led us to celebrate Father's Day in June.

The first, widely publicized, Father's Day event happened on June 19, 1910. It was a hit and led to the question of; should Father's Day be a recognized U.S. holiday?

It wouldn't happen until Dodd was in her 90s.

When did Father's Day become a holiday?

Fathers didn't have their own official holiday until 1972. You may be wondering why it took so long for Father's Day to become holiday and it's because many men didn't want it, according to the Farmer's Almanac.

For the first half of the 20th century, men played a different role in the family. It was felt by many men, in the patriarchal society, that a special day to exalt fatherhood was a "silly" idea, when it was the mothers who were underappreciated, according to Lawrence R. Samuel, the author of"American Fatherhood: A Cultural History".

In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson tried to have Father's Day become a holiday, but it failed to pass through congress. Eight years later, President Calvin Coolidge signed a resolution “to establish more intimate relations between fathers and their children and to impress upon fathers the full measure of their obligations.”

But as times changed and the role of a father, so did the notion of having a holiday.

More than 40 years after Coolidge's resolution, an executive order was signed by then President Lydon Johnson that had Father's Day celebrated on the third Sunday in June. Congress didn't make it a national holiday until 1972.

When is Father's Day USA 2024?

Father's Day is the third Sunday of June every year. This year it will be, June 16, 2024.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Father's Day: The long history behind the June holiday