Better Choice Fathers Day

Though a service was held in July 1908 in West Virginia to honor the fathers killed in the Monongah Mine Disaster (which left over 500 children fatherless) the first official Father’s Day was celebrated in the USA in 1910 and it is Sonora Smart Dodd who is credited as the ‘Mother of Fathers Day’ After hearing a church sermon about Mothers Day Sonora (whose father raised six children on his own after his wife died in childbirth) felt strongly that fatherhood needed recognition as well. In America, Fathers Day is celebrated in June; the month in which Sonora’s father was born. In Australia, Father’s Day didn’t become popular until almost 30 years later, during the Second World War.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics states that we currently have over 4.6 million birth fathers listed in Australia (which I assume means on birth certificates) and here in the land of Oz we celebrate Father’s Day in September.

In an attempt to find out WHY Australia celebrates Father’s Day in September, I came across the theory that the date was decided on purely as a marketing ploy. While some websites, blogs and articles disputed this, considering I couldn’t find any other suggested reason, combined with the fact that Aussies spend around $660 million on Father’s Day cards and gifts every year and the fact that our celebration calendar does seem to be fairly evenly space, I’m inclined to believe it!

While searching for information I also discovered that in the beginning, instead of giving Dad a gift, sons and daughters would wear a rose on Father’s Day to honor their father. If the father was still living, a red rose would be worn and if he wasn’t, the wearer would adorn a white rose. After googling the number of men in Australia and the cost of a single rose (OMG ridiculous!!) and with the help of a calculator I figured out that if we were still doing the rose thing, we would be spending about HALF of what we currently do on Father’s Day which reinforces for me WHY I’ve never heard of the rose tradition and that the true meaning of yet another day on our calendars has been lost through greed and skillful marketing.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against Father’s Day, celebrating the dads and dad figures in our lives and even though I think we need get back to the true meaning of Father’s Dad, I don’t even think we should go back to the original honoring of pinning roses to our chests. I’m not even against giving gifts! What I am against and what makes me sad, is the current expectations, trends, peer pressure and commercialism surrounding Father’s Day.

What springs to mind for me as I write this is the Father’s Days fundraising stalls that schools have. At the school my children attended a stall would be set up in the hall and teachers would bring their classes through so their students could ‘go shopping’ The children who didn’t have any money sat on the floor and waited while their friends purchased gifts for their dads. Looking back now, having worked on these stalls and watching my own children give gifts from these stalls, I note:

  1. The gifts on offer were usually cheap, novelty items that Dad doesn’t need or want. They’ll sit on display for awhile before being shoved in a cupboard or tossed in the trash. (While I couldn’t find facts for Father’s Day, the Gumtree Unwanted Gift Report for 2021 states that 18.7 million unwanted gifts were exchanged in Australia last Christmas!)

  2. Most of the kids that didn’t have money to spend felt REALLY bad, EVEN if their mum had told them they were going shopping at another time to get Dad something else. The fact that the other gift might be $50 and something Dad really wants/needs compared to something on the stall that was $10 and not wanted/needed didn’t come into play for the child. In their eyes EVERYONE else was shopping at the stall and they wanted to as well. It’s not often you see a child happy at being the odd one out.

  3. Some kids would try and put some thought into ‘what dad would like’ but most often would buy something they liked or worse just buy something that matched the amount of money they had. Most kids were determined to spend all their money, others purchased because they wanted to show their friends that they had the most expensive item or that they bought the most items.

  4. The people on the stall where always happy to help the child spend all their money (no criticism intended - I was often one of them!) because after all, it was a fundraising event.

While the fundraising side of things is good for the school, it’s my belief that all these stalls really do is cause angst and competition amongst young children, and encourage excess spending and over consumption while setting up the wrong beliefs and expectations of what Father’s Day is really about….

As for my own Dad? On Father’s Day, I will always send him a message of love and if we’re together I’ll give him a big hug but he doesn’t always get a gift. If there’s something he needs/wants and it’s close to Father’s Day then sure I will get it and give it to him then, but I tend not to buy something just for the sake of having something to give him on a particular day. Usually, no matter what day of the year it is, if there’s something he wants/needs and I get it for him I’ll tell him to consider it an early Father’s Day, Christmas or Birthday present, depending on which one is closest!

If you do choose to give the Dad in your life a gift this Father’s Day, I strongly encourage you to:

  1. Choose something you know he really wants. If you don’t know, don’t be afraid to ASK! It’s so much better than him sending an unwanted present to landfill.

  2. Remember that the gift of time can often have more impact than a physical gift. Be it gardening, fishing, cooking, playing cards or bird watching… spend some time with him doing whatever it is he loves!

  3. Consider giving the gift of an experience over a physical gift. Pay for a dinner, a movie or a round of golf. Get him tickets to the football or for a concert or event he’d enjoy.

  4. If you do choose to give a physical gift, consider better choice, practical, consumable or reusable gifts (see below)

Healthy Clean and Green’s Top 8 Better Choice Father’s Day Gift Suggestions:

  1. Stainless Steel Cutlery Set 2. Safety Razor 3. Socks 4. Insulated Stainless Steel Water Bottle 5. Body Scrubber Brush 6. Bamboo Pen 7. Insulated Stainless Steel Coffee Mug 8. Who Gives a Crap Toilet Paper

Information in this blog sourced at: Australian Bureau of Statistics, news.com.au, britannica.com/topic/Fathers-Day, forteachersforstudents.com.au, wvstatemuseumed.wv.gov/Fathers%20day.html, ecovoice.com.au