Happy Mother's Day!!!
Do you know how Mother's Day began in the U.S.?
May 09, 2008
This Sunday, May 11, all of us will be honoring and celebrating Mother's Day. It is a great time to show our mothers how much we appreciate all that they do for us. Yet, how did we, in the U.S., start celebrating Mother's Day? As I researched data on Mother's Day, I found some very interesting surprises.
Starting in Great Britain and Ireland, I discovered that Mother's Day is celebrated on the fourth Sunday in Lent every year. Some historians believe that Mother's Day can be traced back to the 16th century. Once a young woman married, she often left the church that she was raised in to join her husband's church (provided they were different). As a results, Christian mothers developed a practice of visiting their "mother" church once a year, to gather with their children (those who were married and no longer living at home). Women who were enslaved or in servitude were also released on this one day to gather with their mother at the church. Christians related this idea of "mother's" day with "mother" church.
Now that we have a little background in Great Britain and Ireland, we can now ask the questions, How did the U.S. pick up on the celebration of Mother's Day?
Here in the U.S., we always celebrate
Mother's Day on the 2nd Sunday in May. It is believed
that Americans "loosely" imported the idea of Mother's Day from the
British through a woman social activists named Julia Ward
Howe after the Civil War. This name should ring a bell for
us since she is the writer of the Battle Hymn of the
Republic. Her goal
for this day was to unite women against war. Ms Howe was a peace
activist, calling for a Mother's Day for Peace as
well as writing a poem called, the Mother's Day
Proclamation. This poem was a call for disarmament and
peace. However, Ms. Howe's call for Mother's Day for Peace never
became an official day.
Julia Ward Howe was heavily influenced by a Appalachian women named Anna Jarvis. In 1858, Ms. Jarvis began to work hard to improve sanitation for both sides of the war. These attempts to "clean up" the war was named Mothers' Work Days. Ms. Jarvis was also actively involved in reconciling the Union and Confederate neighbors.
Anna Jarvis' daughter, also named Anna, worked hard to get a memorial day for women. The first mother's day was celebrated in Grafton, West Virginia on May 10, 1908 in the church where her mother had taught Sunday school. This church, the Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church is now considered a National Historic Landmark and is the International Mother's Day Shrine.
Once celebrated in only one small town, the idea of Mother's Day spread to 45 states before President Woodrow Wilson, in 1914, declared the first national Mother's Day celebration in honor of all the mothers whose sons had died in war.
It took only nine years for Mother's Day to become commercialized in the U.S. At that point, Anna Jarvis (the daughter) became a major opponent of this holiday.
Today, Mother's Day is the most popular day of the year to dine out, and it is one of the most commercially successful days of the year.
So, on this Mother's Day, do something great for your mother. Remember: mothers have a history of being rooted in a peaceful movement as well as a movement to "clean up" the environment. So, mothers on this day, speak up! You have the right to relax and be taken out to dinner; after all, President Wilson declared it so.
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