A Salute To Mother's Day

Contrary to popular belief, Mother's Day was not conceived and fine-tuned in the boardroom of Hallmark. The earliest tributes to mothers date back to the annual spring festival the Greeks dedicated to Rhea, the mother of many deities, and to the offerings ancient Romans made to their Great Mother of Gods, Cybele. Christians celebrated this festival on the fourth Sunday in Lent in honor of Mary, mother of Christ. In England this holiday was expanded to include all mothers and was called Mothering Sunday.

Julia Ward Howe

In the United States, and before the noted homemaker Anna Jarvis first proclaimed a day for Mother's, the social activist Julia Ward Howe wrote the Mother's Day Proclamation in 1870, which she delivered at a Women’s Peace Conference in London. The proclamation was an antiwar reaction piece to the brutality of the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War.

The Proclamation put forth Howe's feminist belief that women had a social responsibility to shape their societies. By 1872 her ideas developed into Mother's Day for Peace, which provided the foundation for the present Mother’s Day celebration.
  

Anna Jarvis

Anna Jarvis, an Appalachian homemaker, was the woman responsible for giving the world Mother's Day. She first used the term "Mothering Day" to bring attention to poor health conditions in her community more than 160 years ago. She had founded Mothers' Day Work Clubs in five cities to improve sanitary and health conditions. The Mothers' Day Work Clubs also treated wounds, fed, and clothed both Union and Confederate soldiers with neutrality.

On May 12, 1907, two years after her mother's death, her daughter also named Anna held a memorial to her mother and thereafter embarked upon a campaign to make "Mother's Day" a recognized holiday. She lobbied prominent businessmen and politicians to support a national day honoring mothers.She succeeded in making this nationally recognized in 1914. The International Mother's Day Shrine was established in Grafton to commemorate her accomplishment.
 
In 1914, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson signed a bill recognizing Mother's Day as a national holiday. Mother's Day has now become a major money spinner, with The National Retail Federation expecting a rise in Mother's Day spending this year.

The average celebrant will spend $140.73 on mom up from $126.90 last year. Consumers are expected to drop billions on restaurants, flowers, greeting cards and candy. Not surprisingly, this mass consumerism goes against the wishes of the day’s founder, Jarvis. "Any mother would rather have a line of the worst scribble from her son or daughter than any fancy greeting card," she said. Jarvis also once pointed out, "There is no connection between candy and this day."