Father's Day

Father’s Day. A day to honour fathers (and father figures). A day where men throughout the UK unwrap gifts over a breakfast of smoked salmon and scrambled eggs and fresh coffee, having enjoyed a long lie in bed.

Gifts of socks, ties, sweaters and slippers unwrapped. Mostly unwanted. Mostly selected by children and therefore featuring a cartoon character or some other gaudy design. Gifts of gardening tools. Equally unwanted. Gifts of whisky (or other forms of alcohol). Totally wanted.

I had always assumed that the concept of Father’s Day was established in America by corporate consumer goods giants desperate to create another cash cow during the calendar year. My wife vehemently subscribes to this notion (whilst wholeheartedly embracing the time-honoured tradition of Mother’s Day) meaning that she is free not to engage with the day as a statement of defiance against its materialistic beginnings. My wife makes the claim that Father’s Day was never celebrated in her household in her childhood. And her father didn’t mind. In fact, he pro-actively disagreed with the concept. Thereby she is following the ritual of her childhood and making the noncelebration of Father’s Day a tradition in itself.

The Father’s Day that we celebrate in the UK has indeed travelled from the US and is a relatively modern concept. Some attribute the origins of the day to Grace Golden Clayton, from West Virginia. A mine explosion in a nearby town resulted in the tragic deaths of 360 men and in 1908 Grace proposed that the town needed a day to remember the fathers who had been killed. Others attribute the occasion to Sonora Dodd, a lady brought up with her siblings by her father, after her mother had died during childbirth. She is reported to have listened to a Mother’s Days sermon in 1910 and concluded that her own father deserved the same recognition.

Whilst the above are widely acknowledged as driving Father’s Day in the US and UK, some evidence supports a ‘father’s day’ in some shape or form in Europe since the Middle Ages. Just not celebrated with a crass card and some cheap tat from Amazon. (Maybe a crass drawing by quill pen on parchment and a wood carving).

Anyway, my Father’s Day will be spent the same as every other Sunday. Desperately hunting for a small hidden corner in the house where I can escape for five minutes to read The Sunday Times in peace, instead of being asked to participate in an impromptu rendition of Frozen’s ‘Let it go’, accompanied by rattles, ukuleles, and drums (all bought as gifts, clearly by those with now adult children trying to get their own back). Thinking about it, I haven’t tried the cupboard under the stairs yet. That might work. With a head torch.

Michael Atkinson is a dad to two young sons, but occasionally finds the time to write on golf, whisky, fatherhood and politics.