2016 FATHERS DAY, A SPECIAL ONE

By Nnabugwu Chizoba

This year 2016, marks 106 years that Fathers’ Day began. An event that is organized annually to honour and acknowledge the role of Fathers, in the Family setting and to celebrate Fatherhood, generally.

To ensure that you won’t forget, let me also remind you that it is also a day, to celebrate Grandfathers, Great Grandfathers and Father figures for their contributions, individually/severally and collectively.

This reminder is very important, especially when you consider that many people including you, my esteemed reader, may not have included them in your programme of events today. Please find a way to adjust your schedule.

As a matter of fact some of them, especially the Great Grandfathers, are very weak, and no longer move about while some of them are not lucky to always have their Great Grandchildren around. Similarly, some of them do not have anybody to take care of them. 

I know of one, just like you do, who lost all children given birth to by them. Don’t also forget there are among us in the society who could not have any child of their own, you know what I mean. If you did not include them in your schedule, it will be nice that you consider them as well. Of a truth they have been a father to many people, including us. 

Come to think of it, most of the wonderful fatherly advice we received in life did not necessarily come from our biological Fathers. Some are from people we never had opportunity of meeting again, not on account of death but because our paths never cross again. It is possible we never knew their life history. It is also possible that many of them still lives.

Once again adjust your programme of today, if you still can, to accommodate some or even one person that you ordinarily never considered or would have, even if it means, dropping one of the persons you have always celebrated it with over the years. I am optimistic that, if you explain, somebody, will see the need to join the circle. Give it a trial, the experience is worth it. 

From the simple arithmetic performed above, Fathers’ Day started in 1910, precisely June. 

The first Fathers’ Day held in Spokane, in Washington. Since then the event is celebrated, in the third week of June, in many countries, including Nigeria. However, in Australia it is celebrated, first Sunday of September.

Sonora Smart Dodd, the first person to celebrate the Fathers’ Day, was born in Arkansas, in the United States. The celebration was done at the Young Men Christian Association (YMCA), in hohour of her Father, William Jackson Smart, a Civil War veteran, and a single Father, who by the grace of God raised his 6 children, including Sonora Smart Dodd, there at Arkansas.

If you wonder, how Sonora Smart Dodd, came up with the idea of celebrating her Father! You are not wrong at all, report says, she came up with the idea, while listening to a Mothers’ Day sermon, in Church in 1909.  

As to why this year’s (2016) Fathers’ Day celebration is special, let me quickly say that the first Fathers’ Day held in JUNE 19 that was in 1910, while this year’s Fathers’ Day coincidentally holds today, JUNE 19.

Wishes Fathers all over the World a Happy FATHERS DAY celebration, in JESUS name. Amen!