To all our mothers, have a very happy Mother's Day or Mothering Day. I found this history of Mother's Day online that I thought some of you might enjoy.

It's pouring right now in Hedley and we are off shortly to take a ride on what's left of the Kettle Valley Railway for a mothers' day special ride. Smoke, steam and beer! Can't be bad!

Celebrating motherhood is not new. Rhea was celebrated by the ancient Greeks, Cybele by the ancient Romans, and Brigid by the Celtic Pagans.

Mothering Sunday began in the British Isles during the 17th century.

The earliest mothers' day in the U.S. was organized by Ann Marie Reeves Jarvis (Anna Reeves Jarvis), a teacher and community activist, in 1858 as Mothers' Work Days (note the plural) to work for improved sanitation in West Virginia.

Author Stephanie Coontz says:

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The earliest call for a mothers' day came from Anna Reeves Jarvis, a community activist, who in 1858 organized Mothers' Work Days in West Virginia to improve sanitation in Appalachian communities. During the Civil War, the women she mobilized cared for the wounded on both sides and, after the war's end, arranged meetings to persuade the men to lay aside their enmities.

In 1870 Julia Ward Howe issued her Mother's Day Proclamation (written) (spoken):

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Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with 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, the 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 a 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 often forsaken the plough 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 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 someplace deemed most convenient
And 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.

Ann Marie Reeves Jarvis died in 1905. Her daughter, Anna Marie Jarvis, determined to accomplish her mother's dream of a national mother's day. She began her campaign in 1907 and in 1908 her church agreed to hold a Sunday service honoring mothers. By 1909, 46 churches had mother's day services. In 1912 (1910 by some accounts), her home state of West Virginia established an official Mother's Day, and President Woodrow Wilson signed into law a national Mother's Day on May 14, 1914.

Thus the ideals of mothers' days were subverted. Mothers' days exhorted mothers to work for community and social causes, to work for peace and harmony; Mother's Day encouraged women to relax and be pampered, and to wallow in their own self-importance.

The War Against Mothers Day:

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The adoption of Mother’s Day by the 63rd Congress on May 8, 1914 represented a reversal of everything the nineteenth century mothers’ days had stood for. The speeches proclaiming Mother’s Day in 1914 linked it to celebration of home life and privacy; they repudiated women’s social role beyond the household. One antisuffragist leader inverted the original intent entirely when she used the new Mother’s Day as an occasion to ask rhetorically: If a woman becomes “a mother to the Municipality, who is going to mother us?” Politicians found that the day provided as many opportunities for self-promotion as did the Fourth of July. Merchants hung testimonials to their own mothers above the wares they hoped to convince customers to buy for other mothers. A day that had once been linked to controversial causes was reduced to an occasion for platitudes and sales pitches.

And it spawned an enormous amount of commercialism.

Culpeper native inspired Mother's Day:

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Sadly for Jarvis, commercialization began almost immediately. A trade journal, Florists' Review, was so bold as to print, "This was a holiday that could be exploited."

Holidays and Festivities: The History of Mother's Day

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It is somewhat ironic that after all her efforts, Ana Jarvis ended up growing bitter over what she perceived as the corruption of the holiday she created. She abhorred the commercialization of the holiday and grew so enraged by it that she filed a lawsuit to stop a 1923 Mother's Day festival and was even arrested for disturbing the peace at a war mothers' convention where women sold white carnations -- Jarvis' symbol for mothers -- to raise money. Ana Jarvis' story is not a happy one. Things went from bad to worse and she eventually lost everything and everyone that was close to her and died alone in a sanatorium in 1948. Shortly before her death, Jarvis told a reporter she was sorry she had ever started Mother's Day.

Other sites:

Mother's Day
http://ezine.hellocoolworld.com/index.cfm?issue_num=2&page_id=15

Mother's Day
http://www.wvpics.com/Mothers%20Day.htm

The Forgotten History of Mother's Day
http://www.620wtmj.com/news/local/18842114.html

Mothers' Work Days
http://womenshistory.about.com/od/mothersday/a/work_days.htm

Julia Ward Howe:
Beyond the Battle Hymn of the Republic
http://womenshistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa013100d.htm

History of Mother's Day
http://www.nwhp.org/news/history_of_mothersday.php

The History (AKA Her-story)of Mother's Day
http://www.holidays.net/mother/story.htm

Mother of Mother’s Day
http://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/singapore/m..._of_mothers_day_.php

I think of Mother's Day as Hallmark Holiday, one that definitely exploits us and requires us to spend money on silly things. In my family, however, although we have bought cards and sent them over the years, generally when we buy flowers for mothers they are plants for the garden, and when we spend money on holidays like today we try to spend it on things that will last and make things better, rather than things that will fade away or be consumed.

I definitely feel that both my mother and MIL are worthy of being honored, but I don't need a holiday to do that, and try to let them know often that they are important to us, and we admire and love them.

Ok - I'll try to stop preaching.

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I think of Mother's Day as Hallmark Holiday, one that definitely exploits us and requires us to spend money on silly things.

I don't. As a daughter and a mother, I have always enjoyed Mother's Day. I do think a special day every so often is important; we don't celebrate life enough. If a family wishes to make it "commercialized" and to spend money on "silly things", so be it. However, there are no "requirements" to do that.

I had a wonderful time, mostly because I spent the day with my husband and kids. I hope you did, too, CW!

I did have a nice day. I try to celebrate every day, actually. It's worth it.

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I try to celebrate every day, actually. It's worth it.

That reminds me of when kids ask why there's a mother's and father's day, but no "children's day"? Parents often answer, "Everyday is children's day." Somehow that doesn't go over too well.

I do think there are special days that we celebrate. We'll have to agree to disagree on this one.

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Originally posted by Kalleh:
That reminds me of when kids ask why there's a mother's and father's day, but no "children's day"?

There is a Children's Day (second Sunday in June in the U.S.)! There's also an International Children's Day (usually June 1) and a Universal Children's Day (date varies from country to country, but often November 20).

They surely don't make much of it, do they? I hadn't even heard of it. I've always thought Christmas (or Hannukkah) was for kids, but I suppose many wouldn't agree with that.

And I thought Christmas was a special day sacred to shopkeepers.