Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness throughout the world.

Special Treat – Hart Dowd

May 13, 2006

THE HISTORY of MOTHER”S DAY

Hartson Dowd

thedowds@telus.net

     While many people might assume that Mother’s Day is a holiday invented by the fine folks at Hallmark, it’s not so.   The earliest Mother’s Day celebrations can be traced back to the spring celebrations of ancient Greece and the spring festival honoring the goddess Rhea, wife of Cronus and mother of all gods.  The Romans called their version of the event the Hilaria, and celebrated the Ides of March by making offerings in the temple of Cybele, the mother of the gods.  This event lasted for three days.  Then the Christians jumped in by adapting this Roman festival to honor the mother of Christ, Mary.  Others claim the Roman festival inspired a Christian event to honor the Church as mother.  During this event, people were required to bring offerings to the church of their baptism.

     In more recent times, relatively speaking – England in the 1600s – the celebration was later tied to Easter when the fourth Sunday of Lent {the 40 day period leading up to Easter} was recognized as Mothering Sunday and expanded to include all mothers.  Besides attending church services in honor of the Virgin Mary, young men and young women living away from home returned to visit their mothers.  They would bring small gifts or a “mothering cake” for the occasion.  Mothering cakes came in a variety types, including a very rich fruitcake boiled, then baked and topped with almond icing.

     Mother’s Day festivities in the United States date back to 1872 when Julia Ward Howe (her other claim to fame was writing the lyrics for the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”) suggested the day be dedicated to peace.  Ms. Howe would hold organized Mother’s Day meetings in Boston, Massachusetts every year.

     Ana Jarvis of Crafton, Virginia furthered the cause by beginning a campaign to establish a national Mother’s Day.  Childless and single, Anna believed the most important thing in her life was to honor and cherish her mother.  On the second Sunday of May, 1906, after the death of her mother, Anna decided to organize an activity to honor all mothers.  She took 500 carnations to church and gave one to each mother in the parish.  This is how the tradition of giving flowers on Mother’s Day began.

     Not content to rest on her laurels, Ms. Jarvis and her supporters began to write to ministers, businessmen, and politicians in their quest to establish a national Mother’s Day and in 1912, the Mother’s Day International Association was incorporated for the purpose of promoting the day and its observance.  In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson made it official by proclaiming Mother’s Day a national holiday that was to be held each year on the 2^nd Sunday in May.

     Since then, Mother’s Day has spread and is now celebrated around the world, though not always on the same day.   For example, in Canada, the United States, Netherlands, Denmark and Germany, the holiday is always celebrated on the second Sunday in May.  In Britain, it is celebrated on the third Sunday in March while in Sweden, they wait for the temperature to warm up, and so it is held at the end of May.

PostScript:  It is somewhat ironic after all her efforts, Ana Jarvis ended up growing bitter over what she perceived as the corruption of the holiday she created.  She abhorred the commercialization of the holiday and grew so enraged by it that 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 woman sold carnations – Jarvis’ symbol for mothers – to raise money.  Ana Jarvis’ story is not a happy one.  Things went from bad to worse and she eventually lost everything and everyone that was close to her and she died alone in a sanatorium in 1948.  Shortly before her death, Jarvis told a reporter she was sorry she had ever started Mother’s Day.

The Mother Behind Mother’s Day – The story behind Ana Jarvis’s mother, one Anna Maria Reeves Jarvis, is just as interesting as the story of Mother’s Day itself.  The elder Mrs. Jarvis organized a series of “Mother’s Work Camps: in West Virginia to improve health and sanitary conditions before the civil war.  During the war she declared neutrality for her organization and regularly aided soldiers in need on both sides of the struggle.

“We only have One Mom, Mommy,

One Mother in this World, One life.

Don’t wait for the Tomorrow’s

To tell Mom, you love her.”

…….Author Unknown~

“To the world you might just be one person,

but to one person you just might be the world.”

…….Author Unknown~

Hartson Dowd

thedowds@telus.net