Leigh Eric Schmidt

As occasion rife with artifice and subterfuge, April Fools' Day furnishes an appropriate trope for modern celebrations as tricks of trade.

— Leigh Eric Schmidt

Father's Day was comical in part because fathers seemed so out of place or uncomfortable in this holiday world of sentimental gifts and domestic flattery. The "little remembrances" of flowers, cards, and novelties became funny when showered on Father; they opened up a line of humor that played on the gendered incongruities of holiday gift giving. As one editorial writer on the holiday put the matter in 1925, fathers have "no talent for the fribbles and frabbles and furbelows with which Mother signalizes well-being."

— Leigh Eric Schmidt