The Mother who started “Mother’s Day”
The earliest tributes to mothers date back to the annual spring festival the Greeks dedicated to Rhea, the mother of many deities, and to the offerings ancient Romans made to their Great Mother of Gods, Cybele.
In the United States, Mother’s Day started nearly 150 years ago, when Anna Jarvis, an Appalachian homemaker, organized a day to raise awareness of poor health conditions in her community, a cause she believed would be best advocated by mothers. She called it “Mother’s Work Day.” It was mothers being pro-active, it was about motherhood in a larger sense and having a responsibility to the community at large. To her, motherhood wasn’t just contained, it was about a broader family. The groups sought to help mothers team up to put a dent in high infant mortality and combat other problems. Their motto reflected that vision: “Mothers work — for Better Mothers, Better Homes, Better Children, Better Men and Women.”
Fifteen years later, Julia Ward Howe, a Boston poet, pacifist, suffragist, and author of the lyrics to the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” organized a day encouraging mothers to rally for peace, since she believed they bore the loss of human life more harshly than anyone else.
In 1905 when Anna Jarvis died, her daughter, also named Anna, began a campaign to memorialize the life work of her mother. Legend has it that young Anna remembered a Sunday school lesson that her mother gave in which she said, “I hope and pray that someone, sometime, will found a memorial mother’s day. There are many days for men, but none for mothers.”
Anna began to lobby prominent businessmen like John Wannamaker, and politicians including Presidents Taft and Roosevelt to support her campaign to create a special day to honor mothers. At one of the first services organized to celebrate Anna’s mother in 1908, at her church in West Virginia, Anna handed out her mother’s favorite flower, the white carnation. Five years later, the House of Representatives adopted a resolution calling for officials of the federal government to wear white carnations on Mother’s Day. In 1914 Anna’s hard work paid off when Woodrow Wilson signed a bill recognizing Mother’s Day as a national holiday.
At first, people observed Mother’s Day by attending church, writing letters to their mothers, and eventually, by sending cards, presents, and flowers. With the increasing gift-giving activity associated with Mother’s Day, Anna Jarvis became enraged. She believed that the day’s sentiment was being sacrificed at the expense of greed and profit. In 1923 she filed a lawsuit to stop a Mother’s Day festival, and was even arrested for disturbing the peace at a convention selling carnations for a war mother’s group. Before her death in 1948, Jarvis is said to have confessed that she regretted ever starting the mother’s day tradition.
Despite Amma Jarvis’s misgivings, Mother’s Day has flourished in the United States. In fact, the second Sunday of May has become the most popular day of the year to dine out, and telephone lines record their highest traffic, as sons and daughters everywhere take advantage of this day to honor and to express appreciation of their mothers.
Perhaps Anna was correct in her belief that holidays like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day, and all others have been too commercialized and have lost the significance of the actual holiday, but society has accepted it, so this is the new norm. We as humans should never forget the true meaning of our holidays in whatever faith or tradition we follow. Gifts are nice, but LOVE and the greater meaning is even greater!
Christians celebrated this festival on the fourth Sunday in Lent in honor of Mary, mother of Christ. In England this holiday was expanded to include all mothers and was called Mothering Sunday. Almost all other countries across the globe celebrate “Mother’s Day”, “Mothering Sunday”, or “Woman’s Day”, although the date and month may be a little different, but in most country’s whatever they have chosen to call this celebration of Mothers, is tied to a religious belief or a holiday. (Info found on internet and author’s were not named in the various sources).
HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY – A GIFT FROM THE HEART!
Downriver Activism & Empathy 