As Father’s Day hits its centennial on June 20, 2010, sons and daughters around the world are expected to open their wallets wider–slightly–in celebration. Because of the slowly recovering global economy, people are expected to spend about 4 percent more than in 2009 on cards, ties, tools, clothes, and other Father’s Day gifts.

But the first Father’s Day, a hundred years ago, was decidedly humbler, and refreshingly noncommercial.