Mother's Day - Second Sunday in May: May 2008

Mother's Day was originally conceived by social activist Julia Ward Howe during the American Civil War with a call to unite women against war. She wrote the Mother's Day Proclamation in 1870, as a call for peace and disarmament:

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...

Howe failed in her attempt to get formal recognition of a Mother's Day for Peace. Her idea was influenced by Anna Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker who, starting in 1858, had attempted to improve sanitation through what she called: Mothers' Work Days. She organized women throughout the Civil War to work for better sanitary conditions for both sides, and in 1868 she began working on reconciling Union and Confederate neighbors.

Jarvis' daughter, also named Anna Jarvis, of course, would have known of her mother's work, and the work of Howe. But much later, when her mother died, this second Anna Jarvis started her own crusade to found a memorial day for women. The first such Mother's Day was celebrated in Grafton, West Virginia, on May 10, 1908, in the church where the elder Anna Jarvis had taught Sunday School. Grafton is the home to the International Mother's Day Shrine. From there, the custom caught on - spreading eventually to 45 states! The holiday was declared officially by some states beginning in 1912. In 1914 President Wilson declared the first national Mother's Day. Nine years after the first official Mother's Day holiday, commercialization of the U.S. holiday became so rampant that Anna Jarvis herself became a major opponent of what the holiday had become!

The day now simply celebrates motherhood and thanking mothers. Mothers often receive gifts on this day. And, Mother's Days are celebrated on various days of the year in different countries around the world because they have a number of different origins. One school of thought claims this day emerged from a custom of mother worship in ancient Greece. Mother worship - which kept a festival to Cybele, a great mother of gods, and Rhea, the wife of Cronus - was held around the Vernal Equinox around Asia Minor and eventually in Rome itself, from the Ides of March (March 15) to March 18.

In most countries, Mother's Day is a new concept copied from western civilization. In many African countries Mother's Day has its origins in copying the British concept. In most of East Asia Mother's Day is a heavily marketed and commercialized concept copied straight from Mother's Day in the USA.

Mother's Day continues to this day to be one of the most commercially successful U.S. holidays and is a busy time of year for mail in many countries. In 1973, for instance, the U.S. Postal Service was held up for eight days because of the number of letters and cards they had to handle. Telephone networks are also at their peak on that day.

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