We all know why we celebrate Mother's Day, but how and when did it start?
There are conflicting opinions, but most agree that the earliest Mother's Day celebrations
occurred in ancient Greece to honor Rhea, the mother of the ancient Greek gods.
During the 17th century, England began to celebrate "Mothering Sunday."
The name evolved from the custom of baking a special cake, called a mothering cake, to take
on visits to mother. Today in England, Mothering Sunday is celebrated on the 4th
Sunday of Lent (the 40-day period leading up to Easter).
In the United States, Julia Ward Howe suggested the idea of Mother's Day in 1872. Howe,
who wrote the words to the Battle Hymn of the Republic, saw Mother's Day as a day
dedicated to peace after having lived through the horrors of the United States' Civil War.
Miss Anna Jarvis (1864-1948) of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is credited by most with
bringing about the official observance of Mother's Day in the United States.
Miss Jarvis wanted a way to honor her beloved mother, Mrs. Anna Reese Jarvis, who died
in 1905. The idea probably came from Mrs. Jarvis herself, who, in the late 19th
century, had tried to establish "Mother's Friendship Days" as a way to help heal the
scars of the Civil War. The first Mother's Day observance was a church service
held on May 10, 1908 in Grafton, West Virginia, and in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
arranged by Anna Jarvis.
At that first service, Miss Jarvis furnished carnations, her mother's favorite flower.
She chose white carnations to represent the sweetness, purity and endurance of motherly
love. In time, red carnations came to signify that one's mother is living, while
white carnations came to mean one's mother has died.
Miss Jarvis was so moved by the service honoring her mother that she began a nation-wide
campaign to adopt a formal holiday honoring all mothers. In 1910, West Virginia became
the first state to recognize Mother's Day. A year later, nearly every state
officially marked the day. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson officially proclaimed
Mother's Day a national holiday to be held on the second Sunday of May.
Almost immediately, Mother's Day became an enormously commercial holiday.
Disillusioned by the commercialism, Miss Jarvis spent the rest of her life working
diligently to reverse what she played such a major role to create. At
one point she filed a lawsuit to stop a 1923 Mother's Day festival and was even arrested
for disturbing the peace at a war mothers' convention where women were selling white
carnations to raise money. "This is not what I intended," Jarvis once said.
"I wanted it to be a day of sentiment, not profit!" By the time she died in 1948
at age 84, Miss Jarvis, who was never married and had no children, had spent all of her
money unsuccessfully trying to stop the commercialization of the holiday she worked so
hard to found.
Today, Mother's Day is celebrated throughout the world. Although Mother's Day is not
celebrated on the same day everywhere, some countries, such as Denmark, Finland,
Italy, Turkey, Australia and Belgium also celebrate Mother's Day on the second Sunday in May,
the same day it is celebrated in the United States.
BlackDog's Mother's Day celebration is dedicated to the memories of Frances Dillashaw Corley
and Margaret Craig, two very special mothers who are sorely missed.
