When is Father's Day 2025? Here's the date and origin story for the June holiday for dads
Like Mother's Day, Father's Day always falls on a particular Sunday in June and isn't tied to a calendar date.
Here's when Father's Day 2025 falls on the calendar and how the holiday began in the U.S.
This year, Father's Day falls on Sunday, June 15, 2025.
Father's Day always falls on the third Sunday of June, which means the calendar date changes every year.
Mother's Day came first, and actually inspired Father's Day. According to History.com, the commercialized Mother's Day we know and celebrate in the U.S. today began in 1908, but its origins can be traced all the way back to the mid-1800s.
'The 'Mother's Day' we celebrate today has its origins in the peace-and-reconciliation campaigns of the post-Civil War era. During the 1860s, at the urging of activist Ann Reeves Jarvis, one divided West Virginia town celebrated 'Mother's Work Days' that brought together the mothers of Confederate and Union soldiers …' History.com says.
'In 1909, 45 states observed the day, and in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson approved a resolution that made the second Sunday in May a holiday in honor of 'that tender, gentle army, the mothers of America.''
But Father's Day took a little while longer to get off the ground, due to gender norms of the time. According to the Old Farmer's Almanac and Lawrence R. Samuel, author of 'American Fatherhood: A Cultural History," 'Men had a different role in the family during the first half of that century. It was patriarchal, so they felt that a special day to exalt fatherhood was a rather silly idea, when it was mothers who were underappreciated.'
It wasn't until 1972, under President Richard Nixon, that Congress passed an act officially making Father's Day a national holiday. But the first Father's Day celebration can be traced all the way back to 1908, around the same time Mother's Day kicked off in the U.S.
'The first known Father's Day service occurred in Fairmont, West Virginia, on July 5, 1908, after hundreds of men died in the worst mining accident in U.S. history,' the Old Farmer's Almanac says. But the observance didn't become an annual or nationally observed event.
A year later, Sonora Smart Dodd, a 27-year-old in Spokane, Washington, was inspired by Mother's Day and came up with the idea to set aside a day in June to celebrate dads.
'She proposed June 5, her father's birthday, but the ministers chose the third Sunday in June so that they would have more time after Mother's Day (the second Sunday in May) to prepare their sermons,' the almanac says.
'On June 19, 1910, the first Father's Day events commenced: Sonora delivered presents to handicapped fathers, boys from the YMCA decorated their lapels with fresh-cut roses (red for living fathers, white for the deceased), and the city's ministers devoted their homilies to fatherhood.'
The first bill to make Father's Day a holiday was presented to Congress just a few years later in 1913, but didn't pass.
Eight years later, President Calvin Coolidge signed a resolution in favor of establishing a Father's Day and in 1966, President Lyndon Johnson signed an executive order dictating that the holiday would be celebrated on the third Sunday of June. In 1972, Congress approved an act to make it a national holiday, under Nixon.
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Father's Day 2025: Here's when, why we celebrate dads every June
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All are involved in gaining the trust of people who are in their particular milieu, enabling them to think and sometimes pray through their times of greatest need and day-to-day struggles. An example of both the danger and the dedication of military service chaplaincy is the 1943 death of four chaplains — two Protestant, one Catholic and one Jewish — who helped save some of those aboard a World War II ship, turning over their life jackets and praying and singing hymns before it sank. All four were trained at Harvard University , then the site of the Army's chaplain training school, during a two-year wartime period. 'It was a real defining moment,' said retired Gen. Steve Schaick, who served as Air Force chief of chaplains from 2018 to 2021, and in the same role for the Space Force from 2019 to 2021. 'The stories that came from that really kind of highlighted chaplains at their best.' 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Chaplain Margaret Kibben, acting chaplain of the House of Representatives and former chief of chaplains of the Navy — the first woman in that role — said the isolation and the immediacy of ethical decisions faced by military members, as well as a high level of confidentially, can make the work of military chaplaincy teams different from other settings where chaplains work. 'It's the one place that people can go where there's essentially a sanctuary around them, wherever they find themselves, a safe place to have somebody to talk to about a whole host of issues,' she said, adding that topics can include anything from supporting their families to handling combat responsibilities. 'How do you deal with those issues in a place where you're not going to look stupid, you're not going to look weak or unreliable because you have these doubts and you have these concerns — to have a place that you can go to ensure that you can get that off your chest?' 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For example, Michael 'Mikey' Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for separation of church and state in the U.S. military, has questioned what he viewed as proselytism in the chaplains' ranks. Meanwhile, conservative Christian organizations have voiced concerns about an antipathy against some Christians in military ranks. Karen Diefendorf, a two-time Army chaplain and a board member of the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps Regimental Association, which supports chaplains and their families, said the primary goal for chaplains is 'to provide for the free exercise rights of every soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, Coast Guardsman.' She currently is an interim minister of an independent Methodist church in South Carolina, after serving as a chaplain at Tysons Foods and in hospice care. 'I had soldiers who were practitioners of Wiccan faith, and my job is not to say to them, 'Hey, wouldn't you like to love Jesus?'' she said, recalling how she assisted a Wiccan Army member serving in Korea. 'My job was to help that young soldier find where his particular group of folks met and where he could practice his faith.' Also during her service in Korea in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Diefendorf said she provided cassette tapes of sermons to soldiers and entrusted one with Communion elements because she knew she wouldn't be able to reach their location often. 'So far, the courts have upheld that you certainly have two competing clauses within the First Amendment, establishment and free exercise,' she said. 'And at this point, certainly chaplains have to walk that fine line not to create establishment in the midst of trying to also enable people to practice their beliefs.' Schaick recalled being deployed overseas in the Air Force when a new rabbi joined his staff. On arrival, the rabbi described himself as 'first and foremost a chaplain and secondarily a rabbi' — an order of priorities that Schaick said applies to chaplains to this day, regardless of their faith perspective. 'The longer you serve in the chaplaincy, I think the closer you get to really believing that — and therefore, religious affiliation becomes secondary,' he said. 'It's 'How're you doing today?' and 'I'd love to hear what's on your heart' and 'How can I be able to help you today?' Those kind of questions, quite frankly, are impervious to religious distinctions.' Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . 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