These days Mother’s Day or Mothering Sunday is celebrated all more than the planet. For florists and card stores the occasion is 1 of the highlights of the year, but the roots of Mother’s Day are not industrial.

Motherhood has been celebrated since historical occasions. The historical Greeks compensated homage to Rhea, the Mother of Gods and there are records of the historical Romans worshiping a mother Goddess recognized as Cybele as early as 260 BC. Festivals took place in the spring which was the most fertile time of the year.

The much more modern way of honouring moms started in England in the 1600s exactly where Mothering Sunday was observed on the fourth Sunday of Lent. This day is also recognized as ‘Refreshment Sunday’, the only day when you are allowed to eat or do whatever you have given up for Lent. Not remarkably, families came collectively and took the opportunity to party with a big meal at which mother was treated as the guest of honour. Typically, moms were given posies of flowers and a cake.

The phrase ‘Mothering Sunday’ is now falling into disuse and has largely been changed by ‘Mother’s Day’, which is utilized the planet more than.

In the USA there were a number of attempts to introduce a Mother’s Day as a way to celebrate peace and recover the scars of war. Julia Ward, who wrote the words to the Battle Hymn of the Republic, recommended the idea in 1872. But the idea did not really take off until Anna Jarvis campaigned for the establishment of a Mother’s Day to commemorate her personal mother who died in 1905. Ward’s mother herself had attempted to establish a similar holiday, Mother’s Friendship Day, to recover the pain of the Civil War.

The initial Mother’s Day in the USA was held in 1907 when Julia Ward held a ceremony to honour her mother. She then successfully campaigned for a formal holiday to honour moms and by 1911 most states had taken up the idea. This was followed in 1914 by a declaration by President Woodrow Wilson that Mother’s Day should be celebrated as a nationwide holiday on the second Sunday in May. The idea rapidly spread to Canada and Mexico and numerous much more countries throughout the planet.

The commercialisation of Mother’s Day rapidly followed, much to the disgust of Anna Jarvis who was arrested in 1923 at a Mother’s Day festival for trying to stop women promoting flowers. Jarvis said &quotI wanted it to be a day of sentiment not profit&quot.

Ironically Anna Jarvis campaigned for numerous years against the commercialisation of Mother’s Day, the day she had worked so hard to establish.

Although she had no kids of her personal, each Mother’s Day Anna received hundreds of cards from all more than the planet. Anna Jarvis died in 1948.

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Author: Tony Luck who runs on online personalized gift shop specializing in personalized ceramics – greeting cards (indeed, ceramic greeting cards!), commemorative plates and mugs.
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