Gallery: Thanks, Mom & Dad

When it comes to what’s going on in the family, sometimes Dad falls just a little bit behind. We suppose it’s appropriate, then, that the modern celebration of Mother’s Day got a two-year head start on Father’s Day. Founded by Anna Jarvis, Mother’s Day officially launched in the United States in 1908. Father’s Day came along in 1910 at the behest of Sonora Smart Dodd. Though versions of parental celebrations go back to the Middle Ages in some countries, their interpretation in the States reflects a more modern recognition — and a guarantee that florists and tie merchants will get a late-spring/early-summer boost.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fun Facts

•  West Virginia was the first state to officially recognize Mother’s Day, in 1908. The remaining states fell in line with their own holidays soon after.
• The notion of Mother’s Day grew out of Mother’s Friendship Day, conceived as a way to reunite families torn apart by the Civil War. It had been organized by Anna Jarvis’s mother, Ann Jarvis.
• The association of flowers and Mother’s Day came from Anna Jarvis herself, who invoked the wearing of white carnations as a way to honor moms. A 1913 House resolution directed federal officials to wear them on Mother’s Day.
• Congress fixed Mother’s Day as the second Sunday in May in 1914.
• Ironically, Jarvis opposed Mother’s Day in her later years, believing it had become too commercialized. Greeting cards in particular, she thought, were lazy substitutes for writing an actual letter. She was even arrested in 1925 while protesting her own holiday.

 

 

Fun Facts

• European Catholics celebrated a version of Father’s Day as early as the 1500s.
• Sonora Smart Dodd, who, alongside five brothers, was raised by a single dad, realized during a Mother’s Day church service that fathers should have a day too. She approached the Spokane Ministerial Association to launch a recognition of fathers across the country.
• Dodd worked to promote Father’s Day around the country. She found a powerful ally in an appropriate group: the New York Associated Men’s Wear Retailers. What, you think the ties came out of nowhere?
• Father’s Day wasn’t officially fixed as the third Sunday in June until 1966.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This article is featured in the May/June 2026 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Subscribe to the magazine for more art, inspiring stories, fiction, humor, and features from our archives.