when was mother's day made a national holiday
Mother's Day In 1908, the U.S. Congress rejected a proposal to make Mother's Day an official holiday, joking that they would also have to proclaim a "Mother-in-law's Day".[12] However, owing to the efforts of Anna Jarvis, by 1911 all U.S. states observed the holiday,[13] with some of them officially recognizing Mother's Day as a local holiday[14] (the first being West Virginia, Jarvis' home state, in 1910). In 1914, Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation designating Mother's Day, held on the second Sunday in May, as a national holiday to honor mothers.[15]
Father's Day A bill to accord national recognition of the holiday was introduced in Congress in 1913.[18] In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson went to Spokane to speak at a Father's Day celebration[19] and he wanted to make it an officially recognized federal holiday, but Congress resisted, fearing that it would become commercialized.[20] US President Calvin Coolidge recommended in 1924 that the day be observed throughout the entire nation, but he stopped short at issuing a national proclamation.[19] Two earlier attempts to formally recognize the holiday had been defeated by Congress.[19][21] In 1957, Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith wrote a Father's Day proposal accusing Congress of ignoring fathers for 40 years while honoring mothers, thus "[singling] out just one of our two parents".[21] In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson issued the first presidential proclamation honoring fathers, designating the third Sunday in June as Father's Day.[20] Six years later, the day was made a permanent national holiday when President Richard Nixon signed it into law in 1972.[19][20][21][22]