Motherhood Celebration

Image by Lorri37 via Flickr

 Mother’s Day celebrations can be traced back many centuries. The earliest recorded were the spring celebrations of ancient Greece in honor of Rhea, the Mother of the Gods.

In the 1600’s, early Christians in England started a celebration to honor the Virgin Mary, the mother of Christ. Later changed by a religious order the day was expanded to include all mothers and was know as “Mothering Sunday.” It was celebrated on the 4th Sunday of Lent (the 40 day period leading up to Easter) and honored all themothers of England.

Mothering Sunday was so revered in England that even the servants of the wealthy were given the day off and encouraged to return home and honor their mothers. A special cake called a mothering cake was often baked to provide a festive touch to the celebration.

With the passage of time the tradition of Mothering Sunday or Mothering Day as it was sometimes referred to slowly began to cease. The reason why is not clearly known.

 It is known however that the English colonist who first settled in American discontinued the tradition completely because of lack of time for such foolishness.

 Anna M. Jarvis has the credit for the traditional Mother’s Day we celebrate. But what we celebrate and what she intended are two different things.

 After the death of her mother Anna Reeves Jarvis, Anna M Jarvis started a campaign for the creation of an official Mother’s Day. Her goal was to honor the memory of her mother and honor peace in the world.

 In 1908, she petitioned the superintendent of the church where her mother had taught Sunday School for 20 years. Her request was honored and on May 10, 1908 the first official Mother’s Day celebration was held at Andrew’s Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia and in another church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. White carnations her mother’s favorite flower were given to each mother in attendance. This later changed to the current tradition of a white carnation to honor decreased mothers and red or pink ones to honor mothers still alive.

 By giving up her job and devoting herself full-time to the creation of Mother’s Day, Anna Jarvis endlessly petitioned state governments, business leaders, women’s groups, churches and many other organizations. Finally with the backing of the World’s Sunday School Association, a key influence over state legislators and congress, West Virginia became to first state to officially recognize Mother’s Day in 1912.

In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed it into a national observance, declaring the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day.

The commercialization of Mother’s Day greatly disturbed Jarvis. The floral industry went so far as to print this statement, “This was a holiday that could be exploited”.  She was fearlessly opposed to what she perceived as a misuse of the holiday and in 1923 sued to stop a Mother’s Day event. In 1930 she was arrested for disturbing the peace at the American War Mothers group. She was protesting the sale of flowers. She petitioned against a postage stamp using the image of her late mother, a vase of white carnations and the words, “Mother’s Day.” She was only able to have the words “Mother’s Day’ removed.

In 1938, Time Magazine ran an article about Anna Jarvis and her fight to copyright Mother’s Day, but by then it was too late the stop the commercial trend.

She continued her fight against the commercialization of Mother’s Day by the floral industry until her death in 1948. She died blind, poor and childless and ironically she would never know it was the Florist’s Exchange that anonymously paid for her care in her final days.

A typical family in the United States will celebrate Mother’s Day with gifts, Mother’s Day cards and flowers. Churches still traditionally give carnations out at their Sunday morning services.

While some families give more personal gifts of handmade cards, homemade cakes, breakfast in bed or a day of rest for their mothers instead of store brought gifts; Mother’s Day continues to be a highly commercialized and profitable holiday.

Image via Wikipedia