Happy Father's Day

Sunday is Father’s Day. It may seem like it’s existed forever, but it’s really a more recent addition to the holiday canon. First proposed in 1909 in Spokane, Washington, the federally recognized holiday didn’t become official until President Richard Nixon signed it into law in 1972.

Frilly and Flowery

While community celebrations of fathers go back centuries, here in America, the early proposals were met with derision. The first service to honor fathers was held in 1908 in West Virginia after a mining accident left more than 300 families without fathers. But what really launched the campaign for dads everywhere were the efforts of Sonora Dodd in 1909.

Dodd saw what a similar activist, Anna Jarvis, did to get mothers recognition. Dodd’s father, William Jackson Smart, was a farmer and Civil War veteran. He raised her and 5 other children after his wife Ellen died giving birth to their youngest. Surely he deserved the same accolades that were being laid upon mothers in the United States.

But while Dodd got early government approval, her idea was largely rejected by the very men she sought to celebrate. The rejection was due to the initial idea of Father’s Day being tied to Mother’s Day and Woodrow Wison’s declaration that Mother’s Day was for, “that tender, gentle army, the mothers of America.”

Long before the phrases “toxic masculinity” or “woke culture” entered the lexicon, many men saw Father’s Day as a way to feminize men. Part of it was the flowers – they worked great for Mother’s Day but not so much for Father’s Day.

It also didn’t help that Mother’s Day had become so commercialized that Anna Jarvis herself rejected the holiday she campaigned for. President Calvin Coolidge’s resolution for Father’s Day was, “to establish more intimate relations between fathers and their children and to impress upon fathers the full measure of their obligations.” But too often, men, “scoffed at the holiday’s sentimental attempts to domesticate manliness with flowers and gift-giving … a commercial gimmick to sell more products–often paid for by the father himself.”

In the 1920s, it was proposed to do away with Mother’s and Father’s Days in favor of a single “Parent’s Day.”

Depressing Turn of Events

Weirdly, the most fraught economic time in history actually resurrected Father's Day. Retailers during the Great Depression needed something to spark people to spend money. And in those days, there were no stimulus checks or federal economic bailouts for companies. Summertime seemed like a great opportunity for a second Christmas. But not with flowers and cards – instead, golf clubs, neckties, hats, socks, pipes and tobacco were on the shopping list.

When we entered World War II, the marketers doubled down, promoting Father’s Day as an opportunity to support the troops, many of whom were drafted long before they had children and families, and many who never made it home to them. But by the end of the war, Father’s Day was cemented into our cultural mindset.

The commercialization remains. Even with an economic downturn, it's estimated Americans spent a record $24 billion on Father’s Day last year.

Now, it may seem like an unusual gift, but hear us out. Our Green Perimeter Plus solution is effective, affordable, and safe for the family. All those things that fathers value. And it’s one less thing for him to keep on his to do list. Instead of worrying and wondering if he managed to seal up the entry points and use green treatments for all of the most prevalent pests on the Gulf Coast of Florida, Dad can just sit back, relax and read a book or watch a movie while a professional does the work. (Or, you know, do one of the other things on that seemingly never-ending honey do list).