Remembering Mom Is Good Advice For Over 100 Years

By

Steve Larson

 Mother’s Day, a time to remember that special person in everyone’s life, is one of the most successful days of the year.
Successful from a retail and commercial standpoint And successful from making mom feel that all those things she’s done for us over the years are important to us.
We do that through gifts and dinners. This is the one day that Mom shouldn’t have to cook. She gets her wish in a big way as restaurants throughout the country fill up for their biggest day of the year.
It’s also the day we show mom what we think of her by calling her and buying presents. Phone service in some areas of the county has been known to get jammed up from all the calls. And retailers start advertising jewelry and other gift items weeks in advance. Then, of course there are the flower and gift stalls that line the streets around the Valley.
In all, it amounts to one special occasion we all enjoy and moms everywhere look forward to.
The history of Mother’s Day goes back to ancient times. It started in the U.S.A. about 1912.
Mother's Day in the United States
The United States celebrates Mother's Day on the second Sunday in May. In the United States, Mother's Day was loosely inspired by the British day and was imported by social activist Julia Ward Howe after the American Civil War.
However, it was intended as a call to unite women against war. In 1870, she wrote the Mother's Day Proclamation as a call for peace and disarmament. Howe failed in her attempt to get formal recognition of a Mother's Day for Peace. Her idea was influenced by Ann Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker who, starting in 1858, had attempted to improve sanitation through what she called Mothers' Work Days. She organized women throughout the Civil War to work for better sanitary conditions for both sides, and in 1868 she began work to reconcile Union and Confederate neighbors.
When Jarvis died in 1907, her daughter, named Anna Jarvis, started the crusade to found a memorial day for women. The first such Mother's Day was celebrated in Grafton, West Virginia, on 10 May 1908, in the church where the elder Ann Jarvis had taught Sunday School. Originally the Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church, this building is now the International Mother's Day Shrine (a National Historic Landmark). From there, the custom caught on — spreading eventually to 45 states.
The holiday was declared officially by some states beginning in 1912. In 1914 President Woodrow Wilson declared the first national Mother's Day, as a day for American citizens to show the flag in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war.
Nine years after the first official Mother's Day, commercialization of the U.S. holiday became so rampant that Anna Jarvis herself became a major opponent of what the holiday had become.
Mother's Day continues to this day to be one of the most commercially successful U.S. occasions. According to the National Restaurant Association, Mother's Day is now the most popular day of the year to dine out at a restaurant in the United States.

Mother's Day in various parts of the world
In most countries, Mother's Day is a new concept copied from western civilization.
In many African countries, the idea of one Mother's Day has its origins in copying the British concept, although there are many festivals and events celebrating mothers within the many diverse cultures on the African continent that have been there centuries before the colonials arrived.
In most of East Asia, Mother's Day is a heavily marketed and commercialized concept copied straight from Mother's Day in the USA.
Mother's Day is celebrated on different days throughout the world. Examining the trends in Google searches for the term "mother's day" shows two major blips, the smaller one on the fourth Sunday in Lent (it is also called ladies day and women's day), and the larger one on the second Sunday in May.
Different countries celebrate Mother's Day on various days of the year because the day has a number of different origins.
One school of thought claims this day emerged from a custom of mother worship in ancient Greece, which kept a festival to Cybele, a great mother of Greek gods. This festival was held around the Vernal Equinox around Asia Minor and eventually in Rome itself from the Ides of March (15 March) to 18 March.
The ancient Romans also had another holiday, Matronalia, that was dedicated to Juno, though mothers were usually given gifts on this day.
In some countries Mother's Day began not as a celebration for individual mothers but rather for Christians.

Mothering Sunday in Britain and Ireland
Mothering Sunday, also called "Mothers' Day" in the United Kingdom and Ireland falls on the fourth Sunday of Lent (exactly three weeks before Easter Sunday). It is believed to have originated from the 16th century Christian practice of visiting one's mother church annually, which meant that most mothers would be reunited with their children on this day.