Father, Mother, and the Celebration That Never Ends
By Bagudu Mohammed
I used to watch the fervor poured into Father’s Day and Mother’s Day burn bright, then fizzle into a fog of fatigue. The applause felt endless, unpredictable, almost imaginary. Like a holiday on repeat. I caught myself wanting to stop people mid-celebration like “Wait, didn’t we just do this?” Memory insisted it was only weeks ago that we bought the cards, wrote the tributes, lit the emotions.
Once, these days came like comets: rare, luminous, worth the year’s worth of planning, passion, and creativity. You saved your best for them. Then the calendar betrayed us. Another post. Another headline. Another “Father’s Day.” Doubt crept in. Was it real? Had we been duped? Interest thinned, assurance drained, and celebration curdled into cynicism.
Then it happened again. A quiet banner for Father’s Day, half-whispered articles confirming it was legitimate, yet I couldn’t place it. The ritual felt like déjà vu without a script. That dissonance gave birth to a hunch: maybe the confusion wasn’t ours. Maybe the dates themselves multiply, slip through borders, and return wearing different masks, leaving us weary, unmotivated, and suspicious of fabrication.
The discovery felt like vindication. Many of us never realized how close these Father’s Days and Mother’s Days sit to one another, how they shadow each other across hemispheres, breeding guesswork.
My search revealed there is no single worldwide altar for fathers or mothers. Dates diverge by nation, faith, and history, even if a few have gone global through media and commerce. Theoretical framing helps here. Sociologist Émile Durkheim argued that collective rituals bind societies, but only when timing is sacred and shared. When ritual is fragmented, as anthropologist Victor Turner noted of “liminal” events, meaning thins and participants drift into fatigue. What we’re witnessing is ritual diffusion without ritual consensus.
Father’s Day, in its most exported form, lands on the third Sunday in June for Nigeria, the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and dozens more keep it. Yet elsewhere it breathes on other days: 19 March in Spain and Italy as Saint Joseph’s Day, where Catholic theology fuses paternity with sainthood; the second Sunday in August in Brazil, born of a 1950s journalist’s campaign; the first Sunday in September in Australia and New Zealand, avoiding winter. Each reflects what historian John Gillis calls “the invention of tradition”, the societies anchoring parenthood to local mythologies.
Mother’s Day bends the same way. The second Sunday in May dominates in Nigeria, the U.S., Canada, and much of the West observe it, a date popularized by Anna Jarvis in 1908 and later institutionalized through commercial and political channels. But Britain and Ireland keep Mothering Sunday on the fourth Sunday of Lent, a medieval return-to-the-mother-church rite that predates Hallmark by centuries. France often chooses the last Sunday in May, unless Pentecost intervenes. Some nations tether it to 8 March, merging maternal honor with International Women’s Day, a move feminist scholars like Sylvia Walby read as both empowerment and erasure by collapsing womanhood into motherhood.
In Nigeria, the civic calendar is clear: Mother’s Day, second Sunday in May; Father’s Day, third Sunday in June. Yet the global spillover streams through our phones, pulpits, and markets, creating the illusion of a celebration that never ends. Communication scholars call this “calendar congestion”, when mediatized events overlap, symbolic weight collapses. Research by the Journal of Consumer Research shows that repeated exposure without narrative distinction leads to “celebration fatigue,” where emotional investment and creativity plummet even as frequency rises.
We are not tired of honoring parents. We are tired of honoring them without clarity, without anticipation, without the sacred pause that makes a day feel earned.
We must also discard the quiet rivalry that turns these days into a contest. I’ve watched men brace themselves, amplifying Father’s Day as if defending a neglected shrine, wary that their sacrifice is overlooked. I’ve watched women glance away, only to ignite with unmatched energy when Mother’s Day arrives. Psychologist Ronald Rohner’s work on parental acceptance-rejection reminds us that perceived imbalance in recognition can fracture family cohesion. Celebration should not be a scoreboard. It should be a circle.
So today, on this Father’s Day, let us rise in ovation for men whose headship, leadership, and direction in relationships and family remain natural, undeniable, regardless of storm or season. A man, no matter how small his purse, is a leader by design. He is bred like a soldier standing at the gate, absorbing the arrows, providing cover, shouldering burdens until he forgets his own need for care, value, and honor. Studies on masculinity by Michael Kimmel reveal this “male deficit” which is under-report vulnerability even as they absorb disproportionate risk. In that silence, they sometimes become the vulnerable.
I salute fathers whose direction, even when it comes as coercion, authority, or command, forges discipline, order, principle, and value. Family systems theory tells us that structure, not chaos, gives children the scaffolding to thrive. I celebrate the father who gives a name, because anthropologists from Malinowski to modern kinship scholars agree: naming is belonging. Without it, a child, even with a mother’s fierce love can be exposed to shame, stigma, insult, and the erosion of pride and self-esteem. The patronym is more than a label; it is a shield.
Today I praise fathers who provide and carry responsibility even when pockets are empty and pantries echo. Development economists like Amartya Sen note that capability, not just income, defines provision. The capacity to aspire, to stretch, to protect dignity amid lack. That is fatherhood. That is the celebration that should never end, not because dates multiply, but because devotion does.
Happy Father’s Day.
Bagudu can be reached via bagudumohammed15197@gmail.com or 07034943575.
