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HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!
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Mother's Day is a happy celebration, a time when people remember their mothers and express their appreciation for everything their mothers have done for them. It's a day for doing little things that show your love and respect for a very important woman in your life.
The custom of honoring mothers is centuries old. In England as far back as the 1600s, there was a day called "Mothering Sunday" that was celebrated on the fourth Sunday of Lent. Many poor people in England worked as servants for wealthier folk; they lived in the houses where they worked and almost never got any time off. Usually they had traveled far from their own homes to find work, and so they didn't see their families very often. But on Mothering Sunday servants got a day off and were encouraged to go home and spend a day with their mothers. Often they took along a special cake called a "mothering cake" to provide a festive meal.
Mother's Day as it is celebrated in the United States was first suggested in 1872 by Julia Ward Howe, the woman who wrote the words to the "Battle Hymn of the Republic." She hoped it would become a day dedicated to peace, and she organized Mother's Day meetings in Boston for several years. Other people too began celebrating Mother's Day in their own communities, but the idea didn't really catch on until 1907.
In that year a woman named Anna Jarvis who lived in Philadelphia started a campaign to establish a national Mother's Day. Anna's own mother had wanted to find ways to heal the wounds left by the Civil War and had hoped that mothers would bring their children together in peace. Anna Jarvis asked her mother's church in Grafton, West Virginia, to hold a Mother's Day celebration on the second Sunday in May, the second anniversary of her mother's death.
The following year, 1908, there were Mother's Day celebrations in Grafton and in Philadelphia. Anna Jarvis talked to lots of people and got them to write letters to ministers, politicians, and businessmen to support the idea of Mother's Day. By 1911 Mother's Day was celebrated in almost every state. In 1914 President Woodrow Wilson made an official announcement proclaiming the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day, and that's when it has been ever since.
Did you know…?
Carnations are the flowers that belong to Mother's Day. Perhaps this is because in the "language of flowers" carnations stand for sweetness, purity, and endurance - qualities that people might associate with mothers. However, the real reason may be that carnations were Anna Jarvis's mother's favorite flowers. Bouquets of carnations were used in the first Mother's Day church services in 1907 and 1908, and soon it became the custom to wear a carnation on Mother's Day.
Did you know…?
The idea of a mother as a being who gives life to her children and who protects and nourishes them until they can care for themselves is a very powerful symbol. Many people believe that Mother's Day grew out of much older celebrations that were held in the spring to honor Rhea, the Mother of the Gods, in ancient Greece and Asia Minor. Later, as Christianity spread through Europe, this festival was modified to honor the "Mother Church," which for Christians represented the spiritual power that gave them life and protected them from harm. At some time this church festival became linked to the idea of Mothering Sunday, when people honored their own mothers as well as their church.
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