Look back at these 12 cute vintage Father’s Day cards
Fun fact: Father’s Day only became official in 1972. Find out more about the history of Father’s Day at the end of the page!
To Daddy, from your little girl
Vintage Father’s Day cards – From your son
For you, Dad, from the both of us – A first-class wish
Grandpa, I love you
A Father’s Day wish — just for you, DAD
Vintage card: A little bear fishing
With love to Daddy on Father’s Day
To my Daddy on Father’s Day
Rooster reading: For my Dad on Father’s Day
Puppy mowing the lawn: To you on Father’s Day
For you, Dad, on Father’s Day
Sure hope your day rolls right along without a single care, and that the year ahead is filled…
Vintage Father’s Day cards – From your little girl
Here’s a young daughter bringing dad his slippers and the newspaper
A brief history of Father’s Day (1975)
Mother having had her day, now it’s dad’s turn. Sunday, June 15 [1975] marks the 65th celebration of Father’s Day.
The occasion is likely to be a big one for retailers of gifts like ties, pipes, slippers and sporting goods. Post offices, too, will be busy.
George L. Parker of Hallmark, the world’s leading publisher of greeting cards, estimates that more than 66 million Father’s Day cards will go through the mail this year.
According to Parker, the earliest known forerunner of the Father’s Day card is a clay tablet written almost 4,000 years ago in Babylonia. It was chiseled by a certain Elmesu and petitioned the gods to grant his father good health and long life.
Observance of Father’s Day in America, says Hallmark’s Parker, was brought about by a woman. Mrs Bruce Dodd of Spokane, Washington, who was one of a family of six children whose mother died in 1898. Her father, William Jackson Smart, brought up his motherless offspring single-handedly.
To honor both her own father and fathers everywhere, Mrs Dodd arranged a memorial church service on the third Sunday in June 1910. Father’s Day has been celebrated annually on that day ever since.
It was only as recently as 1972, however, that Father’s Day became ‘official’ by presidential proclamation. The Mother’s Day proclamation, on the other hand, was signed by President Wilson back in 1914.
Just as men are different from women, says Parker, so are the cards sent to greet them. Greeting cards for fathers, unlike most of those sent to Mom on Mother’s Day, are often humorous.
Father’s Day shoppers this year will find more than just greetings at card shops and stores. In addition, many shops selling Hallmark products have such masculine gifts as wood-crafted pens and pencils, playing cards, gift books and a selection of jigsaw puzzles and adult games by Springbok, a Hallmark subsidiary.
