Would Congress pass Father’s Day today?

Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

Note: I wrote this four years ago, including the line about Donald Trump! Happy Father’s Day.

Ebenezer didn’t seem to have much to say about Father’s Day. He didn’t acknowledge it in his columns. He never mentions his own father — whose name, Joseph Ray, I have had to glean from his marriage licenses. He doesn’t utter the name of his stepfather (He might not have liked that term; let’s say his mother’s husband) James Alkins, whose name I found by piecing together information from obituaries and death certificates. And since he was not a father at the time of his New York Age writings — and would not become one until he was 50 years old — he didn’t have any first-person insight to offer.

When I look at the history of Father’s Day, it makes more sense. Although Mother’s Day gained full recognition in the United States in 1914, Father’s Day would not gain equal status until 1972, when President Richard Nixon made it a permanent national holiday.

The effort to recognize fathers began in 1910 by Sonora Smart Dodd. Her father, William Jackson Smart, a Union Army veteran who reared his six children in Spokane, Wash. after his wife died in childbirth, deserved more props, Sonora thought. After hearing a Mother’s Day sermon in 1909, Sonora told her pastor that fathers should have a similar holiday. According to Wikipedia, she initially suggested her father’s birthday, June 5, but the pastors didn’t have enough time to prepare their sermons, and the celebration was deferred to the third Sunday of June.

So what happened between 1910 and 1972? Politics, according to Wikipedia.

A bill to accord national recognition of the holiday was introduced in Congress 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 Congress resisted, fearing that it would become commercialized. President Calvin Coolidge, [a Democrat] recommended in 1924 that the day be observed by the nation, but stopped short of issuing a national proclamation. Two earlier attempts to formally recognize the holiday had been defeated by Congress. In 1957, Maine Sen. Margaret Chase Smith [a Republican] wrote a proposal accusing Congress of ignoring fathers for 40 years while honoring mothers, thus “[singling] out just one of our two parents.” In 1966, [Democratic] President Lyndon B. Johnson issued the first presidential proclamation honoring fathers, designating the third Sunday in June as Father’s Day. Six years later, the day was made a permanent national holiday when [Republican] President Richard Nixon signed it into law in 1972.

It’s a good thing. Can you imagine the current Congress trying to pass a law recognizing Father’s Day? I can just imagine House Speaker John Boehner insisting that President Obama was trying to gain political advantage by spending time with Sasha and Malia. Donald Trump would probably insist that the president’s daughters are not really his.

Of course, I’m just being silly. I hope . . .

But when we despair over the attempts to pass campaign finance reform or a jobs bill or to hold on to the Affordable Care Act, keep in mind that it took Washington 60 years to fully recognize Father’s Day.

Have a happy one!