FATHER'S Day is the day to celebrate the big man in your life and it falls on the third Sunday of June in Malaysia.
However, some countries apparently celebrate Father's Day on a different date. Is this true?
Verdict:
TRUE
Father's Day (or a similar observances celebrating dads), has been celebrated for centuries.
In the West, traditionally one of the feast days was usually designated as a day for dads.
The oldest on record being the Eastern Orthodox Church which appointed the second Sunday before the Sunday of the Nativity (aka Christmas) as the Sunday of the Holy Fathers.
For most of Catholic Europe, the feast day of St Joseph (March 19) was usually associated with fathers.
Just over 100 years ago, Grace Golden Clayton of West Virginia first suggested a day to commemorate fathers in the United States, in particular for dads that died in a mining accident in her home state but was rejected.
A year later in 1909, a Sonora Smart Dodd of Washington state offered up her father's birthday (June 5) as a day to remember dads.
This time around, it was accepted (though a different date was chosen) and the first modern Father's Day was celebrated on June 19, 1910.
Over the years several US presidents embraced the idea of Father's Day before Richard Nixon established the third Sunday of June as the US permanent national Father's Day for the country.
While the vast majority of countries that have a Father's Day use the same date as the US (Malaysia and another 90 included), quite a number do not.
Twelve mostly Catholic-majority countries still use the feast of St Joseph to commemorate dear old dad. Some of the bigger countries in the group include Spain and Italy.
Whereas in the Middle East and parts of the Maghreb in Africa use the 13th of Rajab (which fell on Feb 14 this year) as their special day for fathers.
The day coincides with the birthday of the Caliph Ali and countries that observe this day include Iraq, Iran and Oman.
Finally, up north, all of the Scandinavian countries (except Denmark but including Estonia), use the second Sunday of November as Father's Day.
There is a pretty much practical reason they settled on this day as the third Sunday of June was too close to Mother's Day, which was traditionally held in May.
The story goes that the Swedes brought the tradition back to Sweden from the United States in 1931, however, businesses there were pressured to shift the day to November to help boost trade.
The rest of Scandinavia soon followed suit except for the Danes who kept their day in June.
