If you think Mother’s Day was created by florists, jewelers or the greeting card industry for the purpose of selling their wares, think again. This special day of commemoration is celebrated in countries throughout the world. Its roots can be traced back to ancient times, yet Mother’s Day is as modern as today.
This day has its roots in ancient Egypt, where the goddess Isis was hailed as the mother of the pharaohs. This tradition moved on to Greece and Rome. The holiday later surfaced in Europe and was celebrated as part of Lent honoring the “Mother Church.”
About 500 years ago, a church leader in England extended the celebration to honor real mothers. The name adopted for this event, still held during the Lenten season, was “Mothering Day.” Family feasts were the order of the day and Lenten restrictions were permitted to be put aside for the celebration. Mothers, as the guest of honor, received cakes and gifts from children young and old on this special occasion.
While the earlier settlers brought the English tradition of Mothering Day with them, they were not inclined to celebrate secular holidays. It was not until 1870 that what has evolved into the American version of Mother’s Day was proclaimed. The person behind this was Julia Ward Howe. She wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” 12 years earlier and saw an opportunity to enlist mothers in a cause to end future wars and the deaths of mother’s sons.
In 1873, fewer than 20 cities had established groups that celebrated the new Mother’s holiday every June 2nd. Howe paid for most of the festivities and support dwindled when she stopped paying the bills. One West Virginia woman, Anna Reeves Jarvis, believed in the concept enough to bring together union and confederate families in an effort to mend the divide caused by the Civil War. She called it “Mother’s Friendship Day.”
After her mother’s death, Anna M. Jarvis assumed the work to establish an official Mother’s Day in remembrance of her mother and in honor of peace. On May 10, 1908, the first official Mather’s Day celebration took place at a church in Grafton, West Virginia and another in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. By the next year churches in 46 states as well as Canada and Mexico held Mother’s Day services.
Working endlessly to gain state support, Anna Jarvis was able to convince legislators to recognize Mother’s Day. In 1912, West Virginia became the first state to do so. In 1914, Woodrow Wilson signed into law the national observance of the celebration making the second Sunday in May the official date for Mother’s Day.
Anna Jarvis was against the commercialization of Mother’s Day. In 1923 she sued to stop the event and was arrested in the 1930s for protesting the promotion of flowers in conjunction with the Mother’s Day movement. Anna died poor, blind and childless in 1948, never knowing the Florist’s Exchange anonymously paid for her care until the end.