Some Mark Father’s Day With Confessions

Ghanaians have joined the rest of the world to honour and celebrate fathers for their sacrifice, leadership, mentorship and outstanding roles they play and continue to play in the lives of many.

The day, which is observed on the third Sunday of June globally, was embraced in Ghana to complement the Mother’s Day celebration through the giving of cards, gifts, dining out, sending of well-wishing messages and other forms of showing appreciation to fatherhood.

The Ghana News Agency noted citizens sharing their experiences and sending well wishes to their fathers through radio platforms, television programmes and social media platforms ahead of the day.

In a radio programme in Accra, listeners were asked to share some lies they had told their father and the confessions were interesting.

One said he created a book list to get some money from his dad; another said she had to fake sickness in order to get some attention from her dad; and one confessed that, “I lied to my dad, I was in school but was chilling somewhere”.

On TV viewers were given the opportunity to send in short videos or write-ups sharing fond memories and heroic stories of their fathers.

Online shops, community gift shops and malls have created special packages and displayed gifts for potential customers to celebrate their Fathers.

William Jackson Smart was a twice-married, twice-widowed Civil War veteran and father of 14 children- one of whom dedicated her life to the creation of Father’s Day in honor of her devoted and selfless dad.

The story goes that William’s daughter, Sonora Smart Dodd, was attending one of the first official Mother’s Day services in 1909 at her church in Spokane, Washington, when she had an epiphany—if mothers deserved a day in honor of their loving service, why not fathers?

That first Father’s Day celebration in Spokane might have remained a local tradition if not for the perseverance of Sonora; the 1910 Father’s Day observance, William Jennings Bryan, one of the most famous politicians of the time, sent Sonora a congratulatory letter, which sparked a rush of national media attention on Sonora and Spokane.

Sonora won the support of her congressmen, who began to lobby for the creation of a national holiday. It wasn’t until 1972, six years before Sonora’s death at the age of 96, that President Richard Nixon finally signed a Congressional resolution declaring the third Sunday in June to be Father’s Day.