When Is Father’s Day 2017? All You Need To Know

Mother’s Day is only a few weeks away, leaving many of us wondering if Father’s Day is close behind.

The answer is that it isn’t because Father’s Day for British people is another three-and-a-bit months away – in June.

Here is everything you need to know.

When is Father’s Day?

This one is complicated but, for the UK, the US and a number of other countries, Father’s Day is always held on the third Sunday of the June.

This year the celebration will be on Sunday 18 June.

In Catholic Europe and in a number of Latin American countries, it was celebrated on 19 March but some countries are switching over to the date in June.

Even beyond that there are countries with different traditions and Father’s Day dates are quite varied: Australia’s Father’s Day is in September, for example.

How did it start?

The Catholic day to celebrate fatherhood dates back to the Middle Ages to tie in with the feast of St Joseph.

But the celebration of fatherhood did not reach the US until around 100 years ago. The UK adopted the day much later, around the late 1940s.

How the idea came to US is disputed?

Some suggest that the American Sonora Dodd came up with the idea of a day for fathers after hearing a sermon about mother’s Day in 1910.

She had been raised by her father – along with her siblings – after her mother died in childbirth.

Others suggest that the day’s origins date back to 1908 when Grace Golden Clayton, from Fairmont, West Virginia, campaigned for a date for children in a nearby town to remember their fathers after 360 men died in a mine explosion.

The campaign for Mother’s Day started just a couple of months earlier so it is possible she drew inspiration from this.

How is Father’s Day celebrated?

Over in the States, the date is marked as a public holiday.

Lyndon Johnson first put the date on the public calendar in 1966 and it was officially declared a holiday by Richard Nixon in 1972.

The date is typically marked by with children giving cards and gifts in Britain and the US but over in Germany the date is marked with groups of men celebrating with beer, wine and meat on wagons.

SHARE THIS