Originally submitted Friday, May 4th, 2007
BY EDWIN COONEY
It’s only a few days away you know! No, I’m not talking about either an upcoming major league baseball game or even the Kentucky Derby — it’s Mother’s Day that’s front and center this week.
With almost any phenomenon I think or write about, my first curiosity is its history—even more than its significance. So, I went to the internet to research the history of Mother’s Day and discovered--not at all to my surprise—both its history and significance.
I knew before hitting the computer keys that Mother’s Day, as we know it, was the brainchild of Anna Jarvis of Grafton, West Virginia. It was celebrated there for the first time on Sunday, May 10th 1908 at Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church which was designated as a shrine to Mother’s Day in 1962. I believe I’d also read that it was widely celebrated across America by 1912 and that President Woodrow Wilson had made it official with a presidential proclamation by 1914.
The celebration of Mother’s Day goes back to ancient Egypt and was celebrated there in honor of Isis—goddess of the pharaohs. According to ancient Egyptian mythology, the goddess Isis’s brother-husband was slain by her other brother, the jealous Seth. After his body had been cut into thirteen pieces, the goddess reassembled him and was thus able to impregnate herself from his body. She gave birth to Horace whom she was forced to hide from his jealous and deadly uncle Seth. Once he was grown, Horace confronted and slew Seth and was able to reign, as a god, over a united Egypt. Thus, Isis was celebrated as the mother of the pharaohs.
In ancient Greece as well as throughout Asia Minor, Rhea is celebrated as the mother of the gods. In Rome, Cybele whose myth stems from the Greek goddess Rhea, according to one of my sources, was central to the celebration of “Magna Mater,” or Mother’s Day. However, another source asserts that “Matronalia,” celebrated the goddess Juno with mothers receiving gifts in honor of the day. What both sources do agree on is that in Rome, Mother’s Day was celebrated around the vernal equinox.
Britain began celebrating “Mothering Sunday” on the fourth Sunday of Lent—three weeks before Easter--as far back as the 16th century. Mothering Sunday was taken so seriously by the British that even those bound to apprentice servitude were permitted by their masters to go home to mama every year to celebrate Mothering Sunday. Strange as that may seem, supposedly even British apprentice masters had mothers too, but there may have been another motive for the celebration of motherhood during the darker days of British history. Celebrated as it was on the fourth Sunday of the Lenten season, it was a break in the season. Those who served mother, sharing flowers and cakes with her, could feast and drink all day to their heart’s content. Goodness! Even old Scrooge had to go for that chance. After all, as a good Englishman he surely enjoyed his pint!
In America, Mother’s Day had its origins in idealism. Anna Reeves Jarvis, the mother of Anna M. Jarvis (the actual founder of America’s modern Mother’s Day), began celebrating Mother’s Working Day from the Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church where she taught Sunday school. During the Civil War, Mrs. Jarvis worked not only to improve sanitary living conditions in what by then had become West Virginia, but also to reunite families whose affection had been injured or even severed due to that divisive conflict.
After the war, the author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”, Julia Ward Howe, so despised war that she began working with Mrs. Jarvis for the celebration of a national Mother’s Day. The more prominent Mrs. Howe began using her influence and even money for the celebration of Mother’s Day in some of America’s larger cities such as Boston, New York and Philadelphia, as a day proclaiming peace among people and nations of the earth.
In 1870, with the memory and wounds of the Civil War so fresh and the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in Europe a stark reality, Julia Ward Howe issued the following declaration:
Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise all women who have hearts,
Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears
Say firmly:
We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of
charity, mercy and patience.
We women of one country
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says, "Disarm, Disarm!"
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice!
Blood does not wipe out dishonor
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have of ten forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war.
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions.
The great and general interests of peace.
As stated above, Mrs. Howe backed her words for some years with her money thus funding Mother’s Day in some of our larger cities. Eventually the funding was spent and thus Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day was history even in her adopted home city of Boston, Massachusetts.
By 1908, the daughter of Anna Reeves Jarvis, Anna M. Jarvis, got her mother’s old church to take up the celebration of Mother’s Day. Each congregant would be given two carnations—one white in commemoration of women by then dead and one red or pink for those living. The idea spread and by 1912, forty-five of the forty-eight states were celebrating Mother’s Day.
By the mid 1920’s however, Ms. Jarvis began to revolt against the increasing commercialization of Mother’s Day by America’s florists. She began to sue to stop such commercialization of what she considered to be a sacred celebration of love and idealism.
She lost, of course, and during the 1930’s she had to be arrested for disrupting a Mother’s Day celebration by the Mothers of World War I War Veterans. Ms. Jarvis died in 1948 in a nursing home -- bitter, blind and childless. America, however, almost in defiance of her, still celebrates.
Thus we have Mother’s Day which we celebrate in the way we have freely chosen to celebrate it. As to what I think about it all having gathered the above information, at this writing I’m not quite sure.
This week, I’ll leave the thinking to you!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY