Introduction
Mother's Day is a celebration for honoring all mothers and expressing gratitude to them for all that they do to bring up a child. Most countries including the U.S., Australia, Canada and India celebrate on or near the second Sunday of May. The practice of honoring of motherhood is rooted in antiquity, and past traditional often had strong symbolic and spiritual overtones. Formerly adoration was bestowed upon female deities or the church itself. Only in the past few centuries have celebrations of motherhood developed a more human focus.
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Ancient Civilizations: Isis and Rhea
One of the earliest historical records of a society celebrating a mother deity was in the ancient Egypt, where people held an annual festival to honor the goddess Isis. She was commonly regarded as the mother of the pharaohs. Also, in ancient Greece, the goddess Rhea, mother to most of the major deities, was celebrated with a festival that took place around the time of the vernal equinox. In ancient Rome and Asia Minor the Phrygian goddess Cybele, or Magna Mater (great mother), who stems from Rhea, was honored with a celebration between March 15-22.
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Mothering Sunday in the U.K.
On the fourth Sunday of Lent (the 40 days of fasting before Easter). early Christians honored the church where they were baptized -- their "Mother Church." In the 1600s, a clerical decree in England broadened the celebration to include real mothers, giving this day the name "Mothering Day." For this day, servants and trade workers were allowed to travel to their hometowns to visit family and enjoy a meal— Mother was the guest of honor. Mothers were given special cakes and flowers cakes and flowers, as well as a visit from their beloved and distant children.
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Julia Ward Howe
The first North American Mother's Day was conceptualized with Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation in 1870. Despite having written "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" 12 years earlier, Howe had become so distraught by the death and carnage of the Civil War that she called on mother's to come together and protest what she saw as the futility of their sons killing the sons of other mothers. She called for an international Mother's Day celebrating peace and motherhood.
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Marie Towles Sasseen
In 1885, Mary Towles Sasseen, a school principal in Henderson, Kentucky, wrote stories and poems for students to recite on her mother's birthday. She called the April 20th observance, "Mother's Day Celebration," and invited the mothers of the students to attend. Mary Sasseen often promoted the theme of a Mother's Day and nearly as often would express her desire that she would like to see Mother's Day become a national observance. Sasseen devoted her life to children and promoting Mother's Day, then in a twist of fate, having wed just two years before, she died in childbirth in 1904.
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Anna Marie Jarvis
To reunite families that had been divided between the Union and Confederate sides of the Civil War, a group led by Anna Reeves Jarvis held a Mother's Friendship Day, an adaptation of Howe's holiday. After Anna R. Jarvis died, her daughter Anna Marie Jarvis campaigned for the creation of an official Mother's Day in remembrance of her mother and in honor of peace. Her request was honored, and on May 10, 1908, the first official Mother's Day celebration took place at Andrew's Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia, and a church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
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U.S. Government Adoption
By 1909, parts of Canada and Mexico and 46 states were holding Mother's Day services. Anna Jarvis quit working and devoted herself full time to the creation of Mother's Day, endlessly petitioning state governments, business leaders, and other institutions and organizations. She finally convinced the World's Sunday School Association to back her, a key influence over congress. In 1912, West Virginia became the first state to officially recognize Mother's Day, and in 1914, Woodrow Wilson signed it into national observance, declaring the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day.
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