THAT'S MEN:While it may have its roots in the retail sector, Father's Day should be celebrated, writes PADRAIG O'MORAIN
I USED to dismiss Father’s Day as a commercial conspiracy aimed at separating children from their parents’ cash. I wasn’t wrong about the commercial conspiracy part either, according to the infallible fount of all knowledge, Wikipedia.
It appears that Father’s Day, the brainchild of one Mrs Sonora Smart Dodd of Washington in 1909, only really took off in the 1930s when it was adopted by retailers of men’s clothes who were anxious to boost sales.
On the other hand, everything in life has a price and why shouldn’t we celebrate fatherhood for one day a year? In any case, a pair of socks is a cheap investment compared with the bouquets, dinners and so on, that today’s mother expects when homage is being paid to her on Mother’s Day.
So two cheers for Father’s Day – which takes place next Sunday – is what I say.
And three cheers for Mrs Smart Dodd who apparently came up with the idea for Father’s Day while listening to a Mother’s Day sermon. She had been reared by her father following her mother’s death and she thought his dedication and love deserved to be commemorated.
Whatever begrudgers like myself may think of Father’s Day, there are children out there who will want to celebrate their fathers whether these fathers are good, bad or indifferent. This holds true whether the fathers are present or absent.
Not all children may be in celebratory mood. Teenage children may be going through a period of rejection of their parents and be disinclined to celebrate anything about them. But that period usually comes to an end, eventually, if you have the wisdom to let it. So if your teen doesn’t produce the goods next Sunday, you can assure yourself that the socks are in the post and one day they will arrive.
It’s very important for absent fathers to recognise the value of this day to their kids as well as to themselves. Children benefit from connection with their fathers whether these fathers are living in the family home or not.
And if there are any separated mothers out there who are obstructing such a connection, I would ask them to think again for next Sunday at least.
I acknowledge, by the way, that almost all the separated mothers I have come across are very anxious for their children to maintain the connection with their fathers even if the parents themselves are at war.
Every father is special. In Shakespeare’s most famous play, King Claudius tries to persuade Hamlet that he is grieving too long for his father (whom Claudius has murdered) by arguing:
But you must know, your father lost a father;
That father lost, lost his......and he maintains that to continue grieving for very long is “unmanly grief”.
But the audience instinctively knows that the argument is a false one because every father in that line stretching back as far as you want to go was special to his children and every father to come will be special to his children.
Most will be even more special to their children than they are to themselves.
I mean that fathers have such a mythical status that in their children’s eyes they are actually better and bigger than they are in “real life” so to speak. Each of us would probably be a better man if we tried to be the sort of man our children think we are.
Of course much of the special relationship between fathers and their children is never expressed in words. The words “I love you” are not often heard by fathers from their children and especially from their sons.
Indeed, many men would be shocked if their children were to utter the “I love you” phrase to them – they would wonder if they had been diagnosed with a terminal illness that only their children knew about.
So if you’ve never said it before, for Heaven’s sake don’t frighten the old man by using the L word on Father’s Day.
The least threatening way to get the message across is the time-tested one: say it with socks.
Padraig O'Morain (pomorain@ireland.com) is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His book That's Men, the best of the Thats Men columns from The Irish Timesis published by Veritas