Like so many annual festivals, Father’s Day is, I suppose, all about perspective. It certainly has a different resonance now I am a father myself, and with my eldest son getting married soon, there might come a time when it means something else entirely …
A little research suggests that the secular celebration is less than a century old in the US (far after Mother’s Day was established, incidentally), and only common in the UK after the Second World War! That said, Catholics have been commemorating the Virgin Mary’s husband, St Joseph, since before Shakespeare’s day. And of course, we shouldn’t forget the fifth of the Ten Commandments: ‘Honour thy father and mother‘.
Rather than write something mawkish about the way I am turning into my dad, or about my sons, I wanted to think about fathers in the 16th Century …
The Boar's Head, Eastcheap 