Happy Mother's Day (and some history)

The history of Mother's Day goes back to the late 1800s and in some ways bears little resemblance to our modern celebration (but then, isn't that usually the case?).

A look at its history takes us back to a woman named Julia Ward Howe, who is perhaps best known as the author of the words to "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" during the American Civil War. However, between that war and the Franco-Prussian War, she became horrified by the carnage of war and by 1872 was trying to unite mothers with her call for a "Mother's Day for Peace." In 1873, such a day was celebrated in 18 U.S. cities, and continued to be celebrated in Boston, at least, for the next decade. The celebrations evidently petered out when Howe was no longer personally paying for their continuance, though some celebrations continued for 30 years. However, she was never able to secure formal recognition for Mother's Day for Peace.

Mother's Day as we celebrate it (well, sort of) derives from the work of Anna Jarvis, daughter of Ann Jarvis, a contemporary of Julia Ward Howe who also worked to organize mothers, though her aim was to improve sanitation and, later, to reconcile North and South after the Civil War. Anna Jarvis's Mother's Day was first celebrated in Grafton, WV on May 10, 1908 to honor her mother's work and that of other mothers. The holiday spread to 45 states before becoming an official national holiday in 1914. At that time, it was a day for American citizens to show the flag in honor of mothers whose sons had died in war. Nine years after the first official Mother's Day holiday, commercialization of the holiday had become so rampant that Anna Jarvis herself became a major opponent of what the holiday had become.

 

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The above historical information comes largely from an e-mail I received from a colleague, which he credited to Martha Yeager, the Program Director for the American Friends Service Committee in Southeastern New England. Portions of the wikipedia entry for Mother's Day bear a striking resemblance to the e-mail I received. Additionally, I consulted the webpage for the International Mother's Day Shrine.

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It's probably no surprise that Julia Ward Howe's version of Mother's Day didn't gain official recognition. While governments may talk a good talk about desiring peace, you can be sure that they don't actually want to encourage it in their own citizens--people agitating for peace in a democracy might make it harder to go to war, and no government wants to rule out that possibility.

 

It's probably also not surprising that Jarvis's holiday changed from her original conception of it. Celebrating the work of social activist mothers leaves a lot of mothers out; so, too, does honoring mothers who have lost children in war. A Mother's Day holiday was probably bound to become something more universal, especially with American capitalism just waiting to sell the holiday. It is, evidently, one of the most commercially successful holidays in the country, and the word from Wall Street is that not even an economic slowdown can stop us from spending money on our mothers, with something like $18 billion flowing through the economy on its way to those who gave birth to us.

My Mother's Day wishes, beyond the gourmet cookies I sent my own mother, will be rather less than that, as I simply wish all mother's who may read this, a happy Mother's Day, and especially to those mothers who work to make this world a better place, whether through social activism and their own good works or through raising fine, responsible children whose presence in it makes the world a better place. 

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