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Historically Mother's Day Had A Rocky Start

Tuesday May 6, 2008

By Rebecca F. Kay

   Although mothers have been celebrated throughout history, a National Holiday was not recognized until May 8, 1914 when President Woodrow Wilson signed a joint resolution designating the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day.

    In the United States Mother's Day was initially meant as a day to honor mothers and promote peace.  Julia Ward Howe wrote the “Mother's Day Proclamation” in 1870 in response to the Civil War.  Howe was horrified by the Civil War and believed that if there was a convention of women, they could discuss and determine a way to promote peace and stop the killing of mothers' sons.  In her proclamation Howe states: “In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed…to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions.  The great and general interests of peace.”

    Howe's Mother's Day was celebrated on June 2, 1873 in eighteen U.S. cities. But without additional funding the Mother's Day peace rally would deflate in most U.S. cities.  However, Boston would celebrate this holiday for an additional ten years.

    Howe planted the seeds that would later bloom into Mother's day by the cultivation efforts of Anna Marie Reeves Jarvis and her daughter.  At the turn of the century Jarvis adopted Howe's Mother's Day in an effort to reunite a divided country.  When she died in 1905, her daughter, Anna M. Jarvis, took over the fight for a Mother's Day to be observed by the United States.  

    The observance of Mother's Day found early success in churches. The first official celebration was on May 10, 1908 where over 400 people attended mass.  Anna M. Jarvis arranged for each mother to wear a white carnation.  To Jarvis the carnation symbolized a mother's true and enduring love.   Although today we do not see carnations as often, it was once the symbol of Mother's Day.  

    Anna M. Jarvis campaigned for nine years for a Mother's Day.  Politicians did not take her cause seriously until she was backed by the National Sunday School Association.   With the influential association supporting her cause, the United States Congress passed a joint resolution for a day to honor Mothers that was signed by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914 on the brink of another treacherous war.  

    Anna M. Jarvis is remembered as the mother of Mother's Day.  Although she never had her own children or a husband, she was one of the pioneers behind Mother's Day.  For a long time, carnations remained the flower of the holiday.  People would wear a pink or red carnation to honor their living mother, or a white carnation to remember a mother who had passed away

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