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Europe
As with most of the holidays we celebrate, Mother's Day also began thousands of years ago as a pagan holiday. Pagans always had a multitude of god and goddesses whom they paid tribute to with various cermonies held thoughout the year in their honor. Although the various cultures had their own names for their gods and goddesses, they were still one and the same.
The ancient people of Phrygia in Asia Minor believed that the goddess Cybele was the most import of all. She was considered the daughter of Heaven and Earth and thought to be the mother of all gods. Each year the people of Phrygia held a festival to honor her. Every year in ancient Greece a spring celebration was held in honor of their goddess, Rhea who was considered the mother of the gods.
Magna Mater or Great Mother was for the Romans the mother of all gods. A temple was erected on Palatine Hill in Rome to pay homage to her. The Festival of Hilaria, a three-day celebration is held each year on March 15, in her honor. The Romans brought gifts to the temple to please Magna Mater in hopes she would look favorably upon them.
Mother's Day began during the 1600's in England and was called "Mothering Sunday." This day was celebrated on the 4th Sunday of Lent to honor all mothers of England. During this period servants for the wealthy lived with their employees due to the distance from their own homes. Mothering Sunday was considered a holiday for the servants and their employees would encourage to return home to spend the day with their mothers. Often a special cake which was called the mothering cake was presented to the mothers which provided a festive touch to this celebration.
With the birth of
Christianity spreading through Europe a new holiday was celebrated on the
4th Sunday of Lent to honor the "Mother Church." This celebration
was to give thanks for the spiritual power that gave them life and protected
them from harm. Over time both celebrations blended together and
people began to honor both the Church and their mothers.
North America
Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910)
The first suggestion for Mother's Day was brought forth by Julia Ward Howe in 1872. June 2 was the day she suggested people should observe Mother's Day as a day dedicated to peace. For several years, she conducted an annual Mother's Day meeting in Boston. She would later become known as one of the most famous women of her time.
Julia Ward Howe born into a prominent family in New York City married Samuel Gridley Howe, an American social reformer in 1843. They moved to Boston where she wrote poetry and plays as well as helping her husband edit and antislavery paper called "The Commonwealth." During the Civil War, she visited military camps near Washington, D.C., where she was inspired to write "The Battle Hymn of the Repubic." It was published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1862 becoming the major war song the the Union forces. It also started appearing in all the Union army hymnbooks. Howe became noted as a lecturer and writer on women's right as well as literary and other cultural topics. She also became the first woman elected to the American Academ of Arts and Letter in 1908.
Others
Mary Towles Sasseen,
a teacher in Henderson, Kentucky, began conducting Mother's Day celebrations
in 1887. She accomplished this by having her pupils plan a musical
program for their mothers. Frank E. Hering of South Bend, Indiana,
also instigated a campaign for the observance of Mother's Day in 1904.
Anna M. Jarvis (1864-1948)
Anna Jarvis is considered
the real founder of Mother's Day in America. It was due to her love
and appreciated for her mother that Anne Jarvis began a campaign to promote
Mother's Day as a holiday honoring all mothers. Anna's mother had
often thought that if a special day was set aside to honor honor mothers,
that the fighting and hatred among familis in West Virginia would end.
Anna's mother, (Anna Maria Reeves Jarvis) was the founder of the
Mother's Day Work clubs. These clubs improved sanitary conditions
in her city, raised money for medicine, made bottled milk and provided
domestic help for mothers who had tuberculosis. During the Civil
War, these cubs acted as neutral agents, aiding soldiers from both sides.
It was near the end of the war, that Anna's mother organized a Mother's
Friendship Day. This was held at th courthouse with the idea of uniting
people in peace. This event was so successful that it was continued to
held for many more years. When Anna Maria Reeves Jarvis died on May 9,
1905, Anna vowed she would make her mother's wish for a day to show honor
and appreciation towards mother's come true. It was two years after
her mother's death that Anna persuaded the minister in Grafton, West Virginia,
to hold a service honoring not only her mother, but mother's everywhere.
It is this service which was held on May 12, 1907 that is remembered as
the first Mother's Day celebration. Anna and her supporters continued
to work faithfully writing letter to businessmen, politicians and clergymen
asking for their help in organizing this holiday. The first official
Mother's Day celebrations were held in West Virginia and Philadelphia in
1908. In 1910, Philadelphia became the first state to make Mother's
Day an official holiday with most other states following the next year.
In 1912, the Methodist Episcopal Church passed a resolution which recognized
Anna Jarvis as the founder of Mother's Day and brought forth the second
Sunday in May be observed for this holiday. On May 9, 1914, President
Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation declaring the second Sunday
in May as Mother's Day in every state. At the time of her death there
were more than forty countries world wide who were observing Mother's Day.
Anna Jarvis was also responsible for the custom of wearing a red carnation
if the mother was alive and a white one if she had passed on.
Anna Jarvis, daughter
of Anna Maria Reeves Jarvis, was born in Grafton, West Virginia,
in 1846. Anne had eleven brothers and sisters, eight of who died
before reaching adulthood. Anna wanted to fulfill her mothers dream of
a special day in honor of mothers. She felt very strongly about estabishing
a day to pay tribute to mothers and decided to use some of her inheritance
to promote such a day. Anna and her supporters worked hard
for nine years before President Woodrow Wilson finally signed the Mother's
Day resolution making the holiday official. Anna Jarvis is the person
responsible for organizing the International Mother's Day Association.
She became extremly upset when this day set aside as a tribute to Mother's
everywhre became so commercialized and wished she had never started the
tradition. In 1923, Anna filed a lawsuit in hopes of stopping a Mother's
Day festival, which was to no avail. At one Mother's Day convention,
Anna was arrested for disturbing the peace. She was infuriate when
she found out that carnations designated at the official Mother's Day flower
were being sold stating "I wanted it to be a day of sentiment,
not profit." It was after this that she spent her entire inheritance
trying to undo the commercialization of Mother's Day.
Although Anna Jarvis never married or became a mother, she received Mother's
Day cards from around the world year after year. Prior to her
death in 1948, there were over forty countries celebrating Mother's Day.
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