If you are anything like my dad, you will say Father’s Day is a “Hallmark” holiday, designed to sell cards. Hallmark was founded as the Norfolk Post Card Company in 1907, and the first Father’s Day was celebrated in the United States in 1910, so unfortunately, I can’t rule him out totally just yet.
According to popular belief, Father’s Day began as a way for Sonora Smart Dodd of Washington to honor her father. Given there was already a Mother’s Day and Sonora had been raised without one. Her father, William Jackson Smart, was a veteran and Sergeant of the Grand Army of the Republic during the Civil War. Her mother had passed in her teens, leaving Sonora’s single father to raise her to adulthood. Following his death, she told the Spokane Daily Chronicle “He was both father and mother to me and my brothers and sisters.” So, with that, we arrive at the day’s conception, complimenting Mother’s Day celebrated the month prior.
To make a seemingly random tangent (it’ll become relevant), the English language is a member of the Indo-European language family, originating within the Scythian heartlands somewhere around modern-day Ukraine. Therefore, English is in some capacity related to most European, Iranian, Central Asian, and Indian languages. In English, it’s “father” while in Hindi, it’s “pita.” In Iranian Farsi it’s “pedar” and in Greek it’s “patéras.” Remarkably, for thousands of years, the name by which we call our “dad” has virtually remained unchanged. The word “dad” probably likewise comes from a “baby-talk” misconstruing of “papa” to “pa” to “da” to “dad.”
Now, branching off of “father” but remaining on linguistics, the ancient Andeans that would eventually form the Incan Empire were the first to cultivate and domesticate the potato. They called it “papa” (no relation) according to Spanish conquistadors. However, due to miscommunications/mistranslations and likely a desire to not insult the Pope, who they called “el Papa,” they would then refer to it as “patata” which the English would transform into “potato.”
In any regard, I thank my father for all he has done for me while also blaming him for instilling within me with a burning desire to learn random facts that only benefit me every other week in trivia. This Father’s Day, cherish the time spent with your father and likewise, your children should you have either. There is no harm in buying cards, though it may play into the stereotype stated above and reaffirm my own father’s opinions, which we just can’t have!
By Sam Bishop