Everyone knows Mother's Day, but do you know how it came to be? Before you answer, no, it is not because Hallmark needed another holiday to sell cards. From what historians can tell, celebrating mothers has been around since the earliest of civilizations, Egypt, Greece, and Rome all celebrated mother goddesses, and had festivals where women were predominately featured dancing, singing, and playing music. There were also traditions of eating sweet cakes and giving flowers at these kinds of festivals, which sounds a lot like how we celebrate these days!
As the older religions gave way to Christianity, like many other holidays, celebrating motherhood was adopted and made to be the fourth Sunday of Lent, and was transformed into celebrating mothers themselves, rather than a celebration of general motherhood. In England after the 17th century it was adopted to be called Mothering Day, and it was a huge holiday because even peasants and servants were allowed to pay homage to their own mothers. People were given time to travel home and see their families, and it was a particularly celebratory day for mothers because all their children could be gathered from near and far. Families everywhere had a break from the fasting of Lent with a feast, and again, mother's were presented with cakes and flowers.
However, Mothering Day did not make it's way across the Atlantic with the Pilgrims, probably because they were much more conservative Christians trying to escape what they thought was a too extravagant England. It wasn't until much later that America started it's own tradition of Mother's Day, and it actually came about as a more serious holiday by a woman by the name of Julia Ward Howe. She wrote a proclamation urging mothers to get involved and not allow their sons to kill their sons, so Mother's Day became a day to try and protest the Civil War and try and bring peace. After Howe died, the day eventually wore down and lost popularity again, until Anna M. Jarvis' mother died, and she campaigned for there to be a day for her to remember her mother and in honor of peace. in 1908 she petitioned the church where her mother had spent 20 years teaching Sunday school at to have a day in remembrance of her, and she was successful. Another church joined the celebration, and Anna M. Jarvis got involved and passed out white carnations to all of the 407(!) patrons, giving each mother two flowers. While there was a lot of turmoil in between that Mother's Day and the present; on this day, May 9th 1915, Woodrow Wilson proclaimed Mother's Day to be an official holiday.
From there it grew in popularity all over the United States and beyond. There truly is a rich history you can delve into around the holiday and I encourage you to read some of it if you're interested. Here are a few links where I got my information:
Mother's Day Central
The Legacy Project: Mother's Day History
I know for these mothers, we don't need fancy jewelry or expensive brunches, we just want to hear from you. We want to know that you still think of us as much as we think about you. What are you doing this Mother's Day? What are you doing for your mother? We hope you have a great weekend, and a relaxing Mother's Day!
~Kelly Cranmer Valadez
