It’s the second Sunday of June and families in most of Belgium are celebrating Father’s Day. In the Antwerp area Fathers’ is celebrated on the Feast of Saint Joseph on 19 March. By celebrating Fathers’ Day on the second Sunday in June, Belgium is almost unique in the world. Only Austria celebrates Fathers’ Day on the same day as most of Belgian does. Our Dutch neighbours, like people in many other countries, they celebrate Father’s Day on the third Sunday in June.
Dads with young children will often be given a gift that their child or children have made themselves at school, while fathers with grown-up children might be treated to lunch out or bottles of their favourite beer or wine by their offspring.
An American tradition
The story has it that the idea for the first Father's Day came in 1909. Mrs Sonora Smart Dodd from Washington State in the US wished to honour her father, William Jackson Smart. Mr Jackson Smart was an American Civil War veteran that had become a widower after his wife had died while giving birth to their sixth child. Once his daughter had grown up, she wanted to highlight her father's strength and perseverance. Ms Smart Dodd drew her inspiration from her fellow American Anna Jarvis that had had launched Mother's Day a year earlier.
The first Father's Day took was on 19 June 1910 at Spokane in Washington state. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge supported the idea making Father's Day official. However, the all-male US Congress did not want to pass something that so highlighted men. It was until the Nixon presidency in the early 1970s that Father’s Day was officially recognised. Here in Belgium It was during the interbellum that there were first calls for the introduction of a Fathers’ Day and a “Celebrate Father” action committee was set up in the Antwerp district of Merksem. However, it was until after WWII that Fathers’ Day really took off here.