Father’s Day does not have a tradition going back thousands of years it is just 100 years. However, like Mother’s Day (as opposed to Mothering Sunday) it was brought about by an American woman Sonora Dodd of Washigton State.
Her father, William Smart, was a veteran of the US Civil War and had lost his wife when their sixth child was born. Rather than re-marry he brought up the children on his own on a rural farm in Eastern Washington State.When Sonora became an adult she realised how strong her father had been and aware of everything he had given up for them. She was listening to a Mother’s Day sermon in 1909 when she had the initial idea for a equivalent Father’s Day celebration. And a year later on her father’s birthday, 19th June, in Spokane Washington, she celebrated the first Father’s Day.
It was not until 1924 the the then President, Calvin Coolidge, openly supported the idea of a national Father’s Day in the USA. However it was not until over 40 years later that it became official.
Father's day in the UK started to gain in popularity in the 1970's, however there is still no official national recognition of the day in the UK.