The Origins of Mother’s Day

Throughout the millennia, many different cultures have honoured the role mothers play in creating civilisations and societies. The very first celebrations of what we now recognise as Mother's Day have been traced right back to festivals honouring the fertility and nurturing symbolised in the goddesses Cybele, Rhea and Juno in ancient Greece and Rome.

What is Mother's Day About?

By the 16th century throughout Europe, 'Mothering Day' was the one day each year mothers could expect to be reunited with their children if they were employed in domestic service as it was the only day they would be given leave to visit and reunite with their families. Mothering Day was a Christian festival celebrated on the fourth Sunday after Lent, when all people of good faith were expected to make an annual return with their families to their 'mother' church, the largest church or cathedral in the area, in which they were first baptised.

In the U.S, Mother's Day had much more radical roots. In 1870, Julia Ward Howard wrote the Mother's Day Proclamation, 'An Appeal to Womanhood Around the World' in response to the carnage and devastation of the Civil and Franco-Prussian wars calling on women everywhere to join together to fight for peace and disarmament. Two years later in 1872, she tried to establish a 'Mother's Day for Peace', but was unsuccessful.

Local celebrations of the role of mothers occurred, but there was nothing like Mother's Day celebrations on a national scale in America until 42 years later.

The First Mother's Day

The call for a national commemoration is said to have begun on May 12 1907, when a young woman called Anna Jarvis held a private memorial to her mother who had died two years earlier. Her mother Ann Jarvis had set up Mother's Day Work Clubs across five cities to improve health and sanitation and feed, clothe, house, and tend the wounds of Civil War soldiers regardless of what side they fought on. Can you imagine the courage that took at the time? Her memorial was attended by more than 400 people, quite a feat given the limitations of public transport way back then.

Anna Jarvis then fought to have Mother's Day declared a national holiday and was successful seven years later in 1914 when President Woodrow Wilson declared it a national holiday in honour of the mothers who had lost sons in World War I. By 1921, however, Anna Jarvis was so disgusted by how commercial Mother's Day had become, and how far away from its original purpose and intent that ironically, she turned into one of its biggest opponents. She and her sister spent their family inheritance on campaigning against what the day had become. Both eventually died penniless and embittered.

Anna Jarvis' New York Times obituary reported her contempt at the number of people sending their mothers printed greeting cards and candy: "A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world. And candy! You take a box to Mother—and then eat most of it yourself. A pretty sentiment."

So this year to honour the proud tradition of women everywhere who have fought for what is right, let's come up with fresh, new ways to honour our mothers this year on Sunday 12 May!