Mother’s Day this year is on May 8, a little earlier than other years. Just in case you get a spot on Jeopardy and there’s a Mother’s Day category– here is some help to prepare you.
A day for celebrating mothers has been around for centuries. The Greeks (by the way what haven’t they started?) began it with celebrating Rhea who was the mother of the gods and Cybele, the earth mother.
The Roman borrowed from the Greeks and had a day to celebrate Juno, the patroness goddess of Rome and women. The first Christians (who also borrowed other ideas from….the Greeks) took up this celebration to honor Mary, the mother of Christ on the fourth Sunday of Lent.
Early British religious leaders extended the religious celebration to include all mothers and called it Mothering Day. It was also a day that folks were to return to the “mother” church and later it evolved so that household servants got the day off to visit their mums.
While the holiday did not cross the seas with early settlers, it eventually landed here. Anna Jarvis, a “protolobbyist,” got the presidential seal of approval to make it a national holiday. The first Mother’s Day, May 12, 1907, was a church service in honor of Anna’s mother and other mothers. Anna handed out white carnations because they symbolized sweetness, purity, and patience. It was, however, Julia Ward Howe, a suffragist, who suggested the idea many years before, wanting the day to also celebrate peace.
By the way, Anna never had children of her own. Good thing perhaps. Because if she had children, and they gave her a card or candy or some other present, she would have disowned them. Anna so hated the idea of sending cards and giving gifts to mothers on Mother’s Day that she spent her entire fortune and the rest of her life fighting against the commercialization of Mother’s Day.
President Woodrow Wilson in 1914 made it official by making the second Sunday in May a national holiday to honor mothers. And Hallmark has been kowtowing in thanks to him ever since…………
While most countries have a day to celebrate Mother’s Day, Denmark, Turkey, Italy, Australia and a few other countries celebrate on the second Sunday of May just like us. They borrowed……….of course.
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