| Mother's Day |
| Written by Michael McCann | ||||
Mother's DayShe's Queen for a Day the Second Sunday in May The historical source of Mother's Day, according to some commentators, is the ancient Greek spring festivals dedicated by the worshippers of Cybele to the Great Mother of the Gods, the symbol of universal motherhood. She was the great parent of gods and men, as well as of the lower orders of creation. She was called the Mountain Mother; her sanctuaries were usually on mountains, and frequently in caves; lions were her faithful companions. A bridge between this worship of the female principle of life and the honoring of our modern mothers maybe Mid-Lent Sunday, also called Mothering Sunday, which in years past was widely observed in England on the fourth Sunday after Lent. The early Church, in preserving some of the customs of pre-Christianity, may have substituted for the Great Mother of the Gods either the Mother Church or the mother of Jesus, the Virgin Mary. Over the years, the custom arose of students, apprentices and servants returning home on Mothering Sunday with small gifts of bouquets of violets or of mothering cake for their mothers. In 1864, Robert Chambers wrote of Mothering Sunday in his famous Book of Days: The harshness and general painfulness of life in old times must have been much relieved by certain simple and affectionate customs which modern people have learned to dispense with. Amongst these was the practice of going to see parents, and especially the female one, on the mid-Sunday of Lent, taking for them some little present, such as a cake or a trinket. A youth engaged in this amiable act of duty was said to go a-mothering, and thence the day itself came to be called Mothering Sunday. There was cheering and peculiar festivity appropriate to this day, the prominent dish being furmety which we have to interpret as wheat grains broiled in sweet milk, sugared and spiced. In the northern part of England, and in Scotland, there seems to have been a greater leaning to steeped peas fried in butter, with pepper and salt. Pancakes so composed passed by the name of carlings; and so conspicuous was this article, that from it Carling Sunday became a local name for the day. Another name for mothering cake was simnel cake, a rich plum-pudding ornamented with scallops and eaten in commemoration of the banquet given by the biblical Joseph to his brethren, which forms the first lesson of Mid-Lent Sunday, and the feeding of the five thousand, which forms the Gospel story. In America, the first Mother's Day was held in Philadelphia, May 10, 1908. This holiday resulted from suggestions made by Julia Ward Howe (in 1872) and Anne Jarvis (in 1907). In 1872, not long after the bloody Franco-Prussian War, Julia Ward Howe, Boston poet, pacifist and women's suffragist, asked, Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters to prevent the waste of that human life of which they alone bear and know the cost? Howe's version of Mother's Day, which served as an occasion for advocating peace, was held successfully in Boston and elsewhere for several years, but eventually lost popularity and disappeared from public notice in the years preceding World War I. Meanwhile, Anne Jarvis' mother, Mrs. Anna Reese Jarvis, a minister's daughter who taught Sunday school classes in her native town of Grafton, West Virginia, died in Philadelphia on May 9, 1906. On the first anniversary of her mother's death in 1907, Miss Jarvis told a friend, whom she had invited to a memorial service, of her desire to dedicate a day to all mothers. By 1911 it was nationally observed, and in 1912 a Mother's Day International Association was incorporated to promote it. National recognition came on May 9, 1914, when President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation requesting Americans to offer a public expression of reverence for mothers. Members of the Congress spoke of the home as fountain head of the State, and of mothers as influential for good government and humanity. Originally it was marked by a special church service at which members of the congregation wore white carnations. The day is now characterized by gift giving and sending greeting cards.
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