I found this on the Wikipedia website and thought it would be fun to share the history of Mother's Day with everyone.
In the United States,
Mother's Day is an annual
holiday celebrated on the second Sunday in May. Mother's Day recognizes
mothers, motherhood and
maternal bonds in general, as well the positive contributions that they make to society.
Although many
Mother's Day celebrations world-wide
have quite different origins and traditions, most have now been
influenced by the more recent American tradition established by Jarvis.
Traditions on this day include
churchgoing, the distribution of
carnations, and family dinners.
[1]
The modern holiday was established by Ann Jarvis, who celebrated it
for the first time in 1908, then campaigned to make it an official
holiday. Previous attempts at establishing Mother's Day in the United
States sought to promote peace by means of honoring mothers who had lost
or were at risk of losing their sons to war.
he first attempts to establish a "Mother's Day" in the United States were mostly marked by women's peace groups.
[2] A common early activity was the meeting of groups of mothers whose sons had fought or died on opposite sides of the
American Civil War. There were several limited observances in the 1870s and the 1880s but none achieved resonance beyond the local level.
[3]
In 1868,
Ann Jarvis
created a committee to establish a "Mother's Friendship Day" whose
purpose was "to reunite families that had been divided during the Civil
War", and she wanted to expand it into an annual memorial for mothers,
but she died in 1905 before the celebration became popular.
[3][4] Her daughter Anna Jarvis would continue her mother's efforts.
In New York City,
Julia Ward Howe led a "Mother's Day" anti-war observance on June 2, 1872,
[2][3][5] which was accompanied by a
Mother's Day Proclamation. The observance continued in Boston for about 10 years under Howe's personal sponsorship, then died out.
[6]
Several years later a Mother's Day observance on May 13, 1877 was held in
Albion, Michigan over a dispute related to the
temperance movement.
[7]
According to local legend, Albion pioneer Juliet Calhoun Blakeley
stepped up to complete the sermon of the Rev. Myron Daughterty who was
distraught because an anti-temperance group had forced his son and two
other
temperance
advocates to spend the night in a saloon and become publicly drunk.
From the pulpit Blakeley called on other mothers to join her. Blakeley's
two sons, both traveling salesmen, were so moved that they vowed to
return each year to pay tribute to her and embarked on a campaign to
urge their business contacts to do likewise. At their urging, in the
early 1880s, the
Methodist Episcopal Church in Albion set aside the second Sunday in May to recognize the special contributions of mothers.
Frank E. Hering, President of the
Fraternal Order of Eagles, made the first known public plea for "a national day to honor our mothers" in 1904.
[8][9]
In its present form, Mother's Day was established by
Anna Marie Jarvis, with the help of Philadelphia merchant
John Wanamaker
following the death of her mother Ann Jarvis on May 9, 1905. A small
service was held on May 12, 1907 in the Andrew's Methodist Episcopal
Church in
Grafton, West Virginia where Anna's mother had been teaching
Sunday school.
[3]
But the first "official" service was on May 10, 1908 in the same
church, accompanied by a larger ceremony in the Wanamaker Auditorium in
the
Wanamaker's store on Philadelphia.
[3] The next year the day was reported to be widely celebrated in New York.
[10]
Jarvis then campaigned to establish Mother's Day first as a U.S. national holiday and then later as an international holiday.
[2][3][11] The holiday was declared officially by the state of West Virginia in 1910, and the rest of states followed quickly.
[3]
On May 8, 1914, the U.S. Congress passed a law designating the second
Sunday in May as Mother's Day and requesting a proclamation. On May 9,
1914 President
Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation declaring the first national Mother's Day
[12][13] as a day for American citizens to show the flag in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war.
[12]
In 1934, U.S. President
Franklin D. Roosevelt approved a stamp commemorating the holiday.
[14]
In May 2008 the
U.S. House of Representatives voted twice on a resolution commemorating Mother's Day,
[15][16] the first one being unanimous (with 21 members not voting).
[15] The Grafton's church, where the first celebration was held, is now the
International Mother's Day Shrine and is a
National Historic Landmark.
[17]
Carnations have come to represent Mother's Day, since Anna Jarvis delivered 500 of them at its first celebration in 1908.
[3][13][17] Many religious services held later adopted the custom of giving away carnations.
[3] This also started the custom of wearing a carnation on Mother's Day.
[8] The founder, Anna Jarvis, chose the carnation because it was the favorite flower of her mother.
[18]
In part due to the shortage of white carnations, and in part due to the
efforts to expand the sales of more types of flowers in Mother's Day,
the florists promoted wearing a red carnation if your mother was living,
or a white one if she was dead; this was tirelessly promoted until it
made its way into the popular observations at churches.
[8][19]
Happy Mother's Day!!!
~Angie
