The Origins of Mothers’ Day

Mothers have been celebrated the world over since ancient times. However, when it comes to celebrating mothers, nothing quite beats the modern holiday of Mother’s Day. While my mom is the best, I’ll be the first to admit that all mothers can be cool in their way. They sacrifice so much for their children, so having a holiday celebrating them seems like common sense. Yet it wasn’t always this way. There was a time before there was a Mothers’ Day.

So, how did this celebration begin?

In truth, Mother’s Day as we know it came from a combination of different yet similarly named holidays. One of the first of which was the early Christian festival “Mothering Sunday.” Celebrated on the fourth Sunday of Lent in the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe, it was meant to be a celebration of the church, which several Bible passages call Christ’s bride.

Other inspirations for Mother’s Day were more secular in origin. One began as a social club created by a native of West Virginia named Ann Reeves Jarvis in the mid-nineteenth century. It started as “Mothers’ Day Work Clubs,” small groups whose purpose was to teach local women how to be better caregivers. As these clubs became more popular, their purpose also expanded. Jarvis would later organize the “Mothers’ Friendship Day” with local moms to help former Union and Confederate soldiers promote reconciliation.

Julia Ward Howe’s 1870 “Mother’s Day Proclamation” was another precursor to modern-day Mother’s Day. The proclamation was a call to action for mothers the world over to promote world peace. Howe was, in general, a rather progressive activist, having championed the abolition of slavery and women’s suffrage previously. Promoting her politics to women all over America was a given. Howe would later campaign for “Mother’s Peace Day” to be celebrated on June 2. Some other forerunners of the holiday were Juliet Calhoun Blakely’s local Mothers’ Day in Albion, Michigan in the 1870s and Mary Towles Sasseen’s and Frank Hering’s versions of Mothers’ Day.

However, Mother’s Day’s modern incarnation was started by Anna Jarvis in 1908. Anna Jarvis was the daughter of Ann Reeves Jarvis. She decided to make Mothers’ Day a widespread holiday that honored the sacrifices mothers made for children. She organized the first Mothers’ Day celebration in May 1908 at a Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia. Then, after the huge success of the first Mothers’ Day celebration, she started a letter-writing campaign to all the politicians she could. Her idea eventually reached the White House’s desk. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson announced that the second Sunday of May was the official Mothers’ Day.

Ironically, Anna Jarvis remained unmarried and childless her entire life. Mothers’ Day was her baby, so she was that dedicated to making it the best holiday ever. Perhaps this is why she was so disgusted seeing her baby “commercialized.” She had a very specific image of Mothers’ Day –white carnations, small family gatherings, and church services. But many profiteers saw the holiday as the perfect opportunity to sell cards, candies, and flowers to the masses. By 1920, Jarvis had declared her hatred for the profiteers. She spent the rest of her life campaigning against the holiday she helped popularize.

What can we take from this story? Well, while Anna Jarvis’ reaction to the holiday becoming popular was a tad extreme, I think there’s a good point to be made. People think that Mothers’ Day is about sending cards or flowers when really, it’s about spending time with your family and learning to appreciate mothers for the hard work they put into raising their children. All of the different versions of Mothers’ Days from times past were centered around love. It’s important that we not forget that.