The Origins of Mother's Day
By Janice Kaye
Most people mistakenly believe that Mother's Day is
an invention of the greeting card manufacturers and flower shops —
a cynical ploy to make the nation spend millions of dollars each year
on greetings cards and flowers.
However, the roots of the holiday are more elevated
than this and go back much further, right back to the times of the
ancient Greeks and Romans.
Historians believe that the earliest celebration of
Mother's Day was the ancient springtime festivals in Greece and Rome,
dedicated to the mother goddesses, Rhea and Cybele.
In England "Mothering Sunday", similar to Mother's
Day is observed on the fourth Sunday in Lent. It is believed that
the early church adapted the ancient celebrations, to venerate the
Mother of Christ, Mary.
In the 1600's Mothering Sunday was one day of the
year that all young men and girls who were working away from home
as servants and laborers could return home to visit their mothers,
attend church with them, bringing with them small gifts.
It is Anna M. Jarvis of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
who is credited with being the inventor of modern day Mother's Day
in the USA. Her mother, who was also called Anna Jarvis, used to hold
an annual gathering called "Mother’s Friendship Day" that was intended
to celebrate peace and to heal the pain of the Civil War.
After her mother died in 1905, Anna campaigned for
the establishment of an official Mother’s Day to commemorate her mother's
work. In 1908 the first Mother's Day celebration was held at the West
Virginia Church, where the elder Anna Jarvis had been a Sunday School
teacher for over 20 years.
Each son, daughter and mother present wore white carnations
to symbolize the sweetness, purity and endurance of a mothers love.
Over time, red carnations became the symbol of a living mother, with
white carnations signifying that one's mother has died.
In 1914, President Woodrow signed a bill recognizing
Mother's Day as a National Holiday to be celebrated each year on the
second Sunday in May. Anna Jarvis had envisioned Mother's Day as a
religious holiday, to be observed by attending Church, but, much to
her disgust, it became more and more commercialized with the sending
of cards, gifts and flowers instead.
It is said that before she died in1948 she confessed
that she regretted having started the Mother's Day tradition. Ironically,
she remained childless, but each Mother's Day she would receive thousands
of cards.
The second Sunday of May is the most popular day of
the year in the USA to dine out, and telephone lines are at their
busiest. Mother's Day has become the third-largest card-sending holiday
and Americans collectively send around 150 million Mother's Day cards
and spend an average of $100 on Mother's Day activities each year
. In recent years the face of Mothers Day has changed
and the greeting card companies have adapted to this change. You can
now find cards suitable for single and divorced mothers, for stepmothers,
foster mothers and caregivers. If you look hard enough you might even
find one from the cat to mom.
Janice Kaye is the operator of Biblical-Gifts.Com,
an online shop that specializes in exclusive hand-crafted products,
made out of flowers & fruits grown in the land of the Bible. They
also offer a selection of the best Christian gifts and souvenirs made
in the Holy Land.
http://www.biblical-gifts.com
