How many days until Father's Day?

Father's Day in the Emirates is 21 June, deliberately paired with Mother's Day on 21 March — the same day of the month, one season apart. As with the March date, this is the Arab convention rather than the British third Sunday of June or the American date of the same weekend, and in an expatriate-majority country all of them are marked by somebody.

The 21st is not a holiday and the working day is unaffected. It also arrives at an awkward moment in the local year: late June is the start of the summer proper, with daytime temperatures well above forty degrees, school terms finishing, and a substantial share of families about to leave the country for the holidays. Anything marking the day tends to happen indoors or after dark.

The date coincides with the June solstice, which makes it the longest day of the year here — though at this latitude that means a little under fourteen hours of daylight rather than the extremes of northern Europe, and the practical effect is a sunrise before 5:30 am and a sunset after 7 pm.

The countdown runs to midnight at the start of 21 June and rolls forward to the following year once the date has gone.