The origin of Mothers Day

The concept of celebrating motherhood has been around since ancient times. The ancient Greeks paid tribute to Rhea (the Mother of the Gods) and motherhood in springtime – the most fertile time of year. Later, in the 17th century, England honoured mothers on the fourth Sunday of Lent. This celebration was known as ‘Mothering Sunday’, and in England it is still observed.

In the United States, Julia Ward Howe suggested the idea of Mother’s Day in 1872. Howe, who wrote the words to the Battle Hymn of the Republic, saw Mother’s Day as being dedicated to peace.

However, it was Anna Jarvis of Philadelphia who is credited with bringing about the official observance of ‘Mother’s Day’. She campaigned towards establishing the holiday as a remembrance of her own mother who died in 1905. Jarvis’ mother had, in the late 19th century, tried to establish a similar holiday (Mother’s Friendship Days) as a way to heal the scars of the Civil War.

Two years after her mother’s death, Jarvis held a ceremony in Grafton, W. VA., to honour her. Jarvis was so moved by the ceremony that she began a massive campaign to adopt a formal holiday honouring mothers. West Virginia became the first state to recognise Mother’s Day, in 1910. A year later, nearly every state officially took up the holiday. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson officially proclaimed ‘Mother’s Day’ a national holiday to be held on the second Sunday of May.

But Jarvis found the commercialisation of her hard work a bitter pill to swallow. She filed a lawsuit to stop a 1923 Mother’s Day festival and was even arrested for disturbing the peace at a war mothers’ convention where women were selling white carnations (Jarvis’ symbol for mothers) to raise money. “This is not what I intended,” Jarvis said. “I wanted it to be a day of sentiment, not profit!”
Due to her campaign against the commercialisation of her ‘Mother’s Day’, Jarvis never found time to be a mother herself. Jarvis told a reporter shortly before her death in 1948, at age 84, that she was sorry she had ever started ‘Mother’s Day’. She spoke these words in a nursing home where every ‘Mother’s Day’ her room had been filled with cards from all over the world.

Today many ‘Mother’s Day’ celebrations are held throughout the world. Although they do not all fall on the same day, such countries as Denmark, Finland, Italy, Turkey, The United States, Australia and Belgium also celebrate ‘Mother’s Day’ on the same day as New Zealand.

Felicity