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Mother's Day
The earliest known Mother's Day celebrations occurred in ancient Greece, to honor Rhea, the mother of the Greek gods.
During the 1600s, England created "Mothering Sunday" to honor mothers. The holiday is celebrated on the fourth Sunday in Lent. Then, the custom was for people to bring to their mothers small gifts or a "mothering cake" -- a very rich fruitcake. Servants were given the day off and were encouraged to be with their mothers. Mothering Sunday is very closely tied to honoring the "Mother Church," and is therefore a religious holiday in England.
In the United States, the first suggestion for a Mother's Day celebration came in 1872, when Julia Ward Howe began holding annual meetings in Boston to encourage the practice.
Racked with guilt when her mother dies in 1905, fearing she wasn't a good enough daughter…Schoolteacher Anna Jarvis vows to honor her beloved mother by creating a new national holiday. In 1907, she began a letter-writing campaign to make Mother's Day a national holiday. Jarvis never married, but she was very close to her mother and felt that children often neglected to appreciate their mothers while they were alive. She hoped Mother's Day would strengthen family bonds and increase parental respect. Jarvis was successful in persuading her mother's church in Grafton, W. Va., to celebrate Mother's Day on the second anniversary of her mother's death, the second Sunday of May. By 1908, Mother's Day was also celebrated in Philadelphia.
Jarvis continued her campaign, and by 1911, Mother's Day was celebrated in almost every state. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson made an official announcement proclaiming Mother's Day as a national holiday, to be held each year on the second Sunday of May, the anniversary of Anna's mother's death.
But triumph turns to tears. Anna is appalled at the growing commercialism of the holiday and spends all her money trying to fight it. She dies penniless, childless and embittered in a room filled with Mother's Day cards… "thank you's" sent by strangers… for a day she'd come to dread.
Many countries celebrate their own Mother's Day. The following countries celebrate Mother's Day on the same day as the United States, the second Sunday in May: Denmark, Finland, Italy, Turkey, Australia, and Belgium.
If you have other Birthdays or events to add for this day please E-Mail me.
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