A month ago we got all wound up over Mother’s Day, as we do every year, whether we are mothers or simply remember our own.
Poor Dad. Father’s Day almost seems anti-climatic.
Somehow Hallmark hype focuses more intensely on mothers than fathers, probably because we have different emotions, toward mama than toward papa, but we proved that Mother’s Day had a pre-Hallmark history.
Turns out Father’s Day wasn’t created by Hallmark cards either, but there are a couple of stories that claim its origin at opposite sides of the United States. Another story claims it originated 4,000 years ago in Babylon, where a young boy named Elmesu supposedly carved the first Father’s Day “card” out of clay.
One story says that Sonora Louise Smart Dodd of Creston, Washington, near Spokane, got the bright idea for Father’s Day at age 29, while listening to a Mother’s Day sermon in 1909. Sonora’s father, William Smart, was a Civil War veteran whose wife died while giving birth to their sixth child, and he proceeded to raise all of their children as a single father on a farm outside Spokane.
When Sonora grew up, she began to realize the sacrifices her father had made and to understand the hardships he endured doing the farming, laundry and cooking, and caring for and even educating the six kids. As an adult, she came to see him as selfless, courageous and loving, which apparently he was.
So after contemplating Mother’s Day, thinking of her cool dad, and inspired by Anna Jarvis who crusaded for Mother’s Day, Sonora enlisted the help and influence of the Spokane Ministerial Association and the local Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), and put on the first Father’s Day on June 19th, 1910. She actually chose her father’s birthday, June 5, but it ended up on the 19th because there wasn’t enough time to plan the party on the earlier date.
Others claim that Harry Meek, then president of the Chicago Lions Club, and other club members started Father’s Day in 1915 to honor fathers, including themselves. Meek is said to have chosen the third Sunday in June because it was the closest Sunday to his own birthday, June 20.
Old fans of Mrs. Charles (Grace Golden) Clayton of Fairmont, West Virginia claim that she started Father’s Day in 1908 with a church service at Williams Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church, now known as Central United Methodist Church. Lore says that Grace was motivated to celebrate the fathers among 361 men killed in a mine explosion near Monongah. Mother’s Day had just been celebrated for the first time in the nearby town of Grafton.
William Jennings Bryan got into the act by supporting her effort, along with other public figures, and President Woodrow Wilson’s family celebrated his fatherliness rather publicly in 1916.
President Calvin Coolidge recommended Father’s Day as a national holiday in 1924. In 1966 President Lyndon Johnson proclaimed it a holiday to be celebrated on the third Sunday in June, although it was first officially recognized by President Richard Nixon in 1972.
While advertising for Father’s Day gifts now focuses on electronics and tools, Sonora preferred to wear a red rose to honor living fathers and a white flower to honor those who are deceased.
Gifts and flowers are definitely not compulsory on Dad’s day, but letting him do what he wants is, whether that means sitting on the couch in his shorts watching a game, going on a hike, walking in the woods, going to a movie, going out for a meal or cooking for the rest of the family.
For some reason, lots of dads feel the urge to show their masculinity through barbecuing on their day, probably a throwback to the hunter-gatherer role. Get meat, build fire, cook meat, provide for family.
If you want to spoil Dad at breakfast time to build up his energy to barbecue later, make him some nice heavy banana and pecan buttermilk pancakes, definitely not on anyone’s no-carb diet.

Catch the latest wine country food and wine news at  www.sonomasun.com, click on Kathleen Hill-Epicure. “The Kathleen Hill Show” broadcasts live 4-5 p.m. Mondays on KSVY-91.3 FM or streaming at www.ksvy.org.

Read Kathleen's Epicurious column in this week's Sun>