Is Mother's Day really about mothers or is it about the mass commercialization it brings annually? It originally started in ancient Greece with native Greeks worshiping the goddess “Rhea” who was the mother of all gods. Then later in 17th Century England there was a celebration for mothers that 4th Sunday during Lent, and Julia Ward Howe who penned the famous tune, The Battle Hymn Of The Republic suggested the idea of Mother's Day in 1872 as a dedication to peace and harmony.
It was Anna Jarvis who was credited to bringing the official observation of Mother's Day as a tribute to her own mother who had died in 1905. Jarvis tried to establish in the late 19th Century establish “Mother Friendship Days” as a means to help grieving mothers who had lost their children during the Civil War a time to cope both emotionally and psychologically because most of the pain of the war was alleviated from this day being dedicated to bringing peace to mothers who suffered a great deal during that time.
Jarvis started a small celebration in Grafton, West Virginia two years after her mother's death. Anna was so moved by the ceremonies that she launched a campaign to formally acknowledge Mother's Day a special day devoted to mothers. It wasn't until 1910 that West Virginia became the first state to formally acknowledge Mother's Day. A year later President Woodrow Wilson had officially declared Mother's Day an official holiday marked on that second Sunday in May and the rest of the states had followed suit as well.
Anna became later disenchanted with the commercialization of Mother's Day and had later filed a civil lawsuit to stop a Mother's Day festival at a war convention from taking place and she was subsequently arrested and charged with disturbance of the peace. Jarvis later died at age 84 in 1948, she never had children of her own. In an interview she had admitted that she regretted starting Mother's Day.
This response may have been attributed to the fact that she never had children of her own to really partake in the celebration of a holiday she was credited to bringing to the holiday to the mainstream forefront. Her efforts were never in vain because years after her death, the room at the nursing home she had died in was filled with flowers and cards and other tokens of appreciation for mothers all over the world.
Celebrations take place all over the world, although not at the same time, yet only 6 countries celebrate Mother's Day the same day as the United States they are: Australia, Italy, Belgium, Turkey, Denmark, and Finland. Today Mother's Day is highly commercialized with the flowers, the cards since Hallmark and American Greetings sell millions of dollars worth of cards every year. Other traditions that has become the norm for Mother's Day is taking mom out for Sunday brunch and giving her gifts. If Anna had lived to see what had become of the day she had fervently once supported what would she have thought. I would be sure that she wouldn't be very happy to see how millions of dollars are spent on advertisements for gifts and other things when the day was created to spend obscene amounts of money when Mother's Day was a day created to show appreciation and love for the mothers of the world and it all started with a woman who loved her mother so much she wanted to celebrate it as an official holiday.
Even though she wasn't happy with the commercialization it's become a phenomenon globally and everyone celebrates Mother's Day in their own special way and that's what has made it such a wonderful holiday more than 115 years later.
