There are historians who claim that the holiday of Mother's Day emerged from the ancient festivals dedicated to the Mother Goddesses of yore. In ancient Greece, Rhea, the wife of Cronus, and mother of the Gods and Goddesses, was worshipped. In Rome too, Cybele, a mother Goddess, was worshipped, as early as 250 BC. It was known as Hilaria, and it lasted for three days, called the Ides of March, that is from March 15 to March 18. However, neither of them meant for the honoring of our immediate mothers, as is done on our Mother's Day. The most closely aligned holiday to our Mother's Day, is "Mothering Sunday" of the 1600s. Observed in England "Mothering Sunday", or the "Mid-Lent-Sunday, was on the fourth Sunday in Lent.
On Mothering Sunday young men and women who were apprentices or servants were able to return home. During this time many of the England's poor worked as servants for the wealthy, and as most jobs were located far from their homes, the servants would live at the houses of their employers. On Mothering Sunday the servants would have the day off and were encouraged to return home and spend the day with their mothers. They would bring to their mothers small gifts like trinkets or a "mothering cake". Sometimes furmety was served - wheat grains boiled in sweet milk, sugared and spiced.
The credit for the American Mother's Day observance goes to three women; Julia Ward Howe, Anna Marie Reeves Jarvis and her daughter, Anna Reeves Jarvis. In 1872 Julia Ward proposed a Mother's Day observance dedicated to peace in the years following the Civil War. Such annual observances were held in Boston in the late 1800s.
Julia Ward Howe was born in New York, New York on May 27, 1819 and died on October 17, 1910. Julia Ward Howe was an author. She wrote a lot of children's books. In 1861 she wrote the famous poem "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." It became very popular during the Civil War as a song. She was very active in women's rights. She founded the New England Women's Club, which later became the American Woman Suffrage Association. Eventually it became the League of Women Voters that we still have today. She also headed the American branch of the International Peace Association. She was the first woman to be elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Some of her books were "Life of Margaret Fuller"(1883) and "From Sunset Ridge: Old and New"(1898). Her husband was Samuel Gridley Howe. He founded the New England Asylum for the Blind (later the Perkins Institute), where he was the first to educate a blind deaf-mute successfully. In the 1840s Julia and Samuel edited Commonwealth, a newspaper that was in favor of abolishing slavery.
Anna Marie Reeves Jarvis, mother of Anna Jarvis, was a local legend at the time of her death. Without ever stepping beyond the limits of what was considered acceptable and respectable in a 19th century lady, she had organized women, given lectures, taught Sunday School, worked for peace, and fought disease, all on a local level. She had even organized Mother's Day Work Clubs to provide food and medicine to women in need during the Civil War. She did this so well and so effectively that her courage and goodness became a part of the local folklore, and stories about her were preserved through several generations in Taylor County.
Born on May 1, 1864, Anna had always been extremely attached to her mother. When her mother died in Philadelphia on May 9, 1905, Anna missed her greatly. Anna felt children often neglected to appreciate their mother enough while the mother was still alive. Now, she intended to start a Mother's Day, as an honoring of the mothers. In 1907, two years after her mother's death, Anna Jarvis disclosed her intention to her friends. So, supported by her friends, she started a letter-writing campaign to urging ministers, businessmen and congressmen in declaring a national Mother's Day holiday. She hoped Mother's Day would increase respect for parents and strengthen family bonds.
Early in the spring of 1908, Miss Jarvis wrote to Mr. L.L. Loar, Superintendent of Andrews Sunday School, suggesting that the church where her mother had taught a Sunday School class for twenty years celebrate a Mother's Day in her honor. The idea appealed to Mr. Loar and on May 10th, 1908, the first official Mother's Day service was held at 10 a.m. in Andrews Methodist Sunday School with an attendance of 407 persons. Superintendent Loar addressed the congregation present and explained the aim and objects of Mother's Day as outlined to him by Miss Jarvis.
Immediately following, the services were continued in the sanctuary on the second floor of the church. To this first service, Miss Jarvis sent 500 white carnations, chosen by her as an emblem of purity. One carnation was presented to each son and daughter and each mother was honored with two.
The first Mother's Day proclamation was issued by Governor William E. Glasscock of Morgantown, West Virginia on April 26th, 1910. Prior to any national legislative action, Judge Ira E. Robinson of Andrews Church had been elected as a delegate to the General Methodist Conference which was to convene in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1912. At this conference, Judge Robinson introduced a resolution asking that the conference recognize Anna Jarvis as the founder of Mother's Day, and that the second Sunday in May be the day observed each year.
In May, 1914, at the request of Miss Jarvis, Representative Robert Heflin of Alabama, and Senator Thomas Shephard of Texas, introduced a joint resolution naming the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day. The resolution was passed by both Houses of Congress. The date chosen was that of the anniversary of the death of the founder's mother-Mrs. Anna Reeves Jarvis.
President Woodrow Wilson approved it and Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan proclaimed it. In the President's proclamation which followed, he ordered the flag to be displayed on all government buildings in the United States and in our foreign possessions on the second Sunday in May.
But Jarvis' accomplishment soon turned bitter for her. Enraged by the commercialization of the holiday, 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 sold 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."
When she died in 1948 in a sanatorium in West Chester, Pennsylvania at age 84, Jarvis had become a woman of great ironies. Never a mother herself, her maternal fortune dissipated by her efforts to stop the commercialization of the holiday she had founded, Jarvis told a reporter shortly before her death 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.
Happy early Mother's Day to one and all!
Info and pics from these sites:
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl= ... D%26sa%3DG
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl= ... D%26sa%3DN
http://www.theholidayspot.com/mothersda ... jarvis.htm
http://www.canoe.ca/MothersDay/history.html
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl= ... D%26sa%3DG
