Post by HIPSTEP VAULT on May 16, 2006 11:46:50 GMT
History of Mothers Day
Mother's Day is the nation's third-largest card-sending holiday, and according to Hallmark cards, 136 million Mother's Day cards will be sold this year. But card companies had nothing to do with the holiday's creation. Here's a history of this holiday set aside to honor parenting:
Mother's Day rituals can be found throughout the world. Most of civilization's earliest cultures were matriarchal in nature and paid tribute to female goddesses. Perhaps the earliest Mother's Day can be traced back to celebrations of spring in ancient Greece in honor of Rhea, the mother of the gods. The Romans also had a mother of all the gods, named Cybele. A temple on the Palatine Hill in Rome was built for her. Each year starting on March 15, a three-day celebration called the Festival of Hilaria honored her. Gifts were brought to the temple to please this powerful mother-goddess.
With the emergence of Christianity, a celebration developed to honor the "Mother Church." On the fourth Sunday in Lent, people brought gifts to the church where they had been baptized. As an increasing number of people left their birthplaces to seek work elsewhere, the holiday emerged as the one day a year they could return home to see their mothers. In 17th century England, the day was called "Mothering Sunday," and mothers often received a "mothering cake" for the occasion.
In the United States, author and reformer Julia Ward Howe (1819 - 1910) suggested a celebration of a Mother's Day in 1872 as a day dedicated to peace. During the Civil War, Howe was famous as an ardent abolitionist and was inspired to write the words to "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" by a visit to a Union army camp. After the war, she used her influence for the women's suffrage movement, becoming the first president of the American Woman Suffrage Association in 1869. She also became an outspoken advocate for peace and headed the American branch of the Woman's International Peace Association.
Howe envisioned Mother's Day as "a worldwide protest of women against the cruelties of war." She organized Mother's Day meetings in her hometown of Boston for several years, but these meetings never developed into a national holiday.
A schoolteacher named Anna M. Jarvis (1864 - 1948) is credited with gaining recognition for our modern celebration of Mother's Day. She created the holiday to honor her departed mother, Anna Reese Jarvis of Grafton, W. Va. The younger Jarvis remembered her mother's comments that men were always being honored, but not women or mothers, and that the scars of the Civil War could be healed if mothers were treated with more respect.
In 1907, Jarvis, then living in Philadelphia, began a campaign to establish a national Mother's Day. She persuaded her mother's church in Grafton, West Virginia, to celebrate Mother's Day on the second anniversary of her mother's death, the second Sunday of May. The next year, Mother's Day was also celebrated in Philadelphia. Jarvis also began the custom of wearing a carnation, her mother's favorite flower.
Jarvis and her supporters organized a grassroots campaign and wrote to politicians, ministers and businessman in their quest to establish a national Mother's Day. The governor of West Virginia issued the first Mother's Day proclamation in 1910. By 1911, almost every state celebrated Mother's Day. The U.S. House of Representatives voted in 1913 to request that the president, the Cabinet, members of the House and Senate, and government officials wear a white carnation on Mother's Day.
In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson officially proclaimed Mother's Day a national holiday to be held each year on the second Sunday of May. Wilson, who had often thrown obstacles in the way of women's winning the right to vote, may have seen the proclamation as an appeasement to the nation's women, but suffragists were unimpressed. To them, the gesture appeared trite and condescending, even insulting; they viewed the Mother's Day proclamation as a message that women should be content with motherhood, go home and stop organizing for suffrage. (Fortunately for us, they did not.)
Jarvis herself intensely disliked the commercialization of the holiday, particularly the marketing of cards and flowers. She even filed a lawsuit to stop a 1923 Mother's Day festival and was arrested for disturbing the peace at a war mothers' convention where women sold white carnations to raise money. "This is not what I intended," Jarvis said. "I wanted it to be a day of sentiment, not profit!"
Shortly before her death in 1948 at age 84, Jarvis told a reporter she was sorry she had ever started Mother's Day. She spoke these words from a nursing home where, on every Mother's Day, her room was filled with cards from all over the world. She never married or had children of her own.
Before she became disenchanted with Mother's Day, Jarvis organized the International Mother's Day Association, and as a result, more than 40 countries observed Mother's Day by the time she died. While many countries celebrate at different times throughout the year, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Turkey, Australia, Japan and Belgium all celebrate Mother's Day on the second Sunday in May.
In South Africa and France, Mother's Day is celebrated on the first Sunday in May. Norway observes Mother's Day on the second Sunday in February, and Argentina celebrates it on the second Sunday in October. Lebanon celebrates Mother's Day on the first day of spring. In both Spain and Portugal, Mother's Day is celebrated on Dec. 8 as a day of thanks to the Virgin Mary, but also a day when children honor their mothers. Sweden celebrates Mother's Day on the last Sunday in May; the Swedish Red Cross sells tiny plastic flowers to raise funds to give vacations to mothers with many children.
Source: www.now.org
2006 is the year of Intelligence!
Mother's Day is the nation's third-largest card-sending holiday, and according to Hallmark cards, 136 million Mother's Day cards will be sold this year. But card companies had nothing to do with the holiday's creation. Here's a history of this holiday set aside to honor parenting:
Mother's Day rituals can be found throughout the world. Most of civilization's earliest cultures were matriarchal in nature and paid tribute to female goddesses. Perhaps the earliest Mother's Day can be traced back to celebrations of spring in ancient Greece in honor of Rhea, the mother of the gods. The Romans also had a mother of all the gods, named Cybele. A temple on the Palatine Hill in Rome was built for her. Each year starting on March 15, a three-day celebration called the Festival of Hilaria honored her. Gifts were brought to the temple to please this powerful mother-goddess.
With the emergence of Christianity, a celebration developed to honor the "Mother Church." On the fourth Sunday in Lent, people brought gifts to the church where they had been baptized. As an increasing number of people left their birthplaces to seek work elsewhere, the holiday emerged as the one day a year they could return home to see their mothers. In 17th century England, the day was called "Mothering Sunday," and mothers often received a "mothering cake" for the occasion.
In the United States, author and reformer Julia Ward Howe (1819 - 1910) suggested a celebration of a Mother's Day in 1872 as a day dedicated to peace. During the Civil War, Howe was famous as an ardent abolitionist and was inspired to write the words to "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" by a visit to a Union army camp. After the war, she used her influence for the women's suffrage movement, becoming the first president of the American Woman Suffrage Association in 1869. She also became an outspoken advocate for peace and headed the American branch of the Woman's International Peace Association.
Howe envisioned Mother's Day as "a worldwide protest of women against the cruelties of war." She organized Mother's Day meetings in her hometown of Boston for several years, but these meetings never developed into a national holiday.
A schoolteacher named Anna M. Jarvis (1864 - 1948) is credited with gaining recognition for our modern celebration of Mother's Day. She created the holiday to honor her departed mother, Anna Reese Jarvis of Grafton, W. Va. The younger Jarvis remembered her mother's comments that men were always being honored, but not women or mothers, and that the scars of the Civil War could be healed if mothers were treated with more respect.
In 1907, Jarvis, then living in Philadelphia, began a campaign to establish a national Mother's Day. She persuaded her mother's church in Grafton, West Virginia, to celebrate Mother's Day on the second anniversary of her mother's death, the second Sunday of May. The next year, Mother's Day was also celebrated in Philadelphia. Jarvis also began the custom of wearing a carnation, her mother's favorite flower.
Jarvis and her supporters organized a grassroots campaign and wrote to politicians, ministers and businessman in their quest to establish a national Mother's Day. The governor of West Virginia issued the first Mother's Day proclamation in 1910. By 1911, almost every state celebrated Mother's Day. The U.S. House of Representatives voted in 1913 to request that the president, the Cabinet, members of the House and Senate, and government officials wear a white carnation on Mother's Day.
In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson officially proclaimed Mother's Day a national holiday to be held each year on the second Sunday of May. Wilson, who had often thrown obstacles in the way of women's winning the right to vote, may have seen the proclamation as an appeasement to the nation's women, but suffragists were unimpressed. To them, the gesture appeared trite and condescending, even insulting; they viewed the Mother's Day proclamation as a message that women should be content with motherhood, go home and stop organizing for suffrage. (Fortunately for us, they did not.)
Jarvis herself intensely disliked the commercialization of the holiday, particularly the marketing of cards and flowers. She even filed a lawsuit to stop a 1923 Mother's Day festival and was arrested for disturbing the peace at a war mothers' convention where women sold white carnations to raise money. "This is not what I intended," Jarvis said. "I wanted it to be a day of sentiment, not profit!"
Shortly before her death in 1948 at age 84, Jarvis told a reporter she was sorry she had ever started Mother's Day. She spoke these words from a nursing home where, on every Mother's Day, her room was filled with cards from all over the world. She never married or had children of her own.
Before she became disenchanted with Mother's Day, Jarvis organized the International Mother's Day Association, and as a result, more than 40 countries observed Mother's Day by the time she died. While many countries celebrate at different times throughout the year, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Turkey, Australia, Japan and Belgium all celebrate Mother's Day on the second Sunday in May.
In South Africa and France, Mother's Day is celebrated on the first Sunday in May. Norway observes Mother's Day on the second Sunday in February, and Argentina celebrates it on the second Sunday in October. Lebanon celebrates Mother's Day on the first day of spring. In both Spain and Portugal, Mother's Day is celebrated on Dec. 8 as a day of thanks to the Virgin Mary, but also a day when children honor their mothers. Sweden celebrates Mother's Day on the last Sunday in May; the Swedish Red Cross sells tiny plastic flowers to raise funds to give vacations to mothers with many children.
Source: www.now.org
2006 is the year of Intelligence!