Today is Mother’s Day — a day we celebrate every year on the second Sunday of May. For the last couple of years, I’ve kind of passed over Mother’s Day on these pages, so this year I think it deserves a little more discussion.
The “Mother’s Day” that we celebrate is a relatively recent occurrence — having only been celebrated since 1908. But similar activities or festivals have been around for many years. In Greek mythology spring festivals were held in honor of Rhea, the goddess of fertility, motherhood and generation. She was the wife of Cronus and was believed to be the mother of many deities.
The ancient Romans celebrated a spring festival called Hilaria — dedicated to a mother goddess named Cybele. Her followers made offerings at the temple, held parades, and played games. The festival lasted three days.
In India, people celebrate Durga-puja, a festival that pays homage to the mother goddess, Durga. The festival is a ten-day event that takes place in the fall.
In England in the 1600’s, Mothering Sunday took place on the 4th Sunday of Lent. It began with a prayer service in honor of the Virgin Mary. Afterwards, children would present their moms with flowers.
In 1870, Julia Ward, who wrote the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” suggested a day of peace and strongly advocated other women to stand up against war. She was able to get Boston to recognize mothers on the second Sunday of June.
The modern day “Mother’s Day” movement began during the Civil War — Ann Jarvis championed a cause to foster friendship and community between the mothers of both the North and the South. She started a committee which established the first glimmer of today’s day — “Mother’s Friendship Day.”
Ann Jarvis’s daughter sought to honor her own mother by establishing an intimate day of observance that led to today’s holiday. She created the Mother’s Day International Association and advocated a mother’s day observance the second Sunday in May. Woodrow Wilson legitimized the celebration as a nationwide holiday.
Unfortunately, the holiday quickly became a commercialized opportunity for merchants to sell flowers, candy and cards. Jarvis’s daughter thought this was detracting from the personal and intimate aspects of the holiday and fought against such commercialization. She eventually used all her money is her fight and died at the age of 84 in a sanatorium.
This year, Mother’s Day, like everything else, will be a little different… according to my extensive research, in 2018 about 87 million adults made plans to go to a restaurant for Mother’s Day. Maybe there’ll be 87 million “carry-outs” today.
One statistic we always hear is that more phone calls are made on Mother’s Day than any other day — the last data I could find indicated that about 122 million calls were made on the second Sunday of May. Of course you can still call, but I imagine a lot of those calls have turned into “texts.” Probably the most important things for mothers is to just hear from their children — maybe they’d prefer a call, but I’m sure texts work, too.
Supposedly the first thing a baby can vocalize is the ‘ma’ sound, which may be why in almost every language the word for mother begins with the letter ‘M’ or is some iteration of the ‘ma’ sound.
Even though mothers deserve to be honored every day, it’s nice to set aside a special day for them, so no matter what you call it, or what day it’s celebrated, the purpose is the same, a special recognition and appreciation day for our moms.
Happy Mother’s Day to Claire, Kelly and Chassie — the best three Moms I know.
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