What U.S. holiday inspired the creation of Father's Day?

Mother’s Day inspired the creation of Father’s Day in the United States.

The connection is closely associated with Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, Washington. In 1909, after hearing a sermon about the recently popularized Mother’s Day, Dodd argued that fathers deserved a comparable day of recognition. She especially wanted to honor her own father, William Jackson Smart, a Civil War veteran who had raised six children as a single parent.

Dodd initially suggested June 5, her father’s birthday, but Spokane’s ministers chose the third Sunday in June because they needed more time to prepare. The first Spokane observance took place on June 19, 1910, at the YMCA.

Mother’s Day itself had been promoted nationally by Anna Jarvis and was formally recognized in the United States in 1914. Father’s Day developed more slowly and faced criticism as a commercial imitation, but it eventually became a permanent national observance in 1972.