Mother’s Day

If you would like to know the real, accurate history of how we got Mother’s Day, please read the following words: Ron

After the Civil War, abolitionist Julia Ward Howe, author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”, led a Mother’s Day for Peace march in New York on June 2, 1872, to promote peace, national healing and reconciliation.

She composed a proclamation to “appeal to womanhood throughout the world.”

She personally sponsored a Mothers’ Day celebration in Boston for the next ten years till interest dwindled.

In the following decades, Protestant churches and schools observed Decision Day for committing to Christ, Roll Call Day for church membership, Missionary Day, Temperance Sunday, and Children’s Day.

Numerous efforts arose for observing a Mother’s Day, but taking the day from a suggestion to a reality was Anna Jarvis. She is the person most responsible for making Mother’s Day a nationally observed event.

Anna was from Grafton, West Virginia, the granddaughter of a Baptist minister.  She was a member of Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church, where she taught Sunday school.

In 1876, after one of her Bible lessons, Anna Jarvis closed with a prayer:  “I hope and pray that someone, sometime, will found a memorial mothers day commemorating her for the matchless service she renders to humanity in every field of life. She is entitled to it.”

Similar to Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, Anna Jarvis’ mother worked during the Civil War to organize Mothers’ Day Work Clubs to care for wounded soldiers, both Union and Confederate.

Anna’s mother raised money for medicine, inspected bottled milk, and improved sanitation.  She arranged in 1868 a “Mother’s Friendship Day to reunite families that had been divided during the Civil War.”

Inspired by her mother’s self-sacrifice and generosity, Anna Jarvis wanted to honor her, and all mothers. On May 12, 1907, Anna persuaded her church, Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church, to have a small Mother’s Day service.

The next year, May 10, 1908, Anna organized a Mother’s Day in two places:  Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church, and in Philadelphia, where she gave a moving speech in the auditorium of the 12-story Wanamaker Department Store.

Wanamaker, who had paintings of Christ throughout his store, stated:  “There is a power in the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Keep uppermost the profound conviction that it is the Gospel that is to win the heart and convert the world. The things that were sweet dreams in our childhood are now being worked out. The procession is being made longer and longer; the letters of Christ’s name are becoming larger and larger.”

John Wanamaker was a retail pioneer and founder of one of the first department stores.

With the financial backing of John Wanamaker and H.J. Heinz, maker of “57 varieties” of ketchup, Anna Jarvis began a letter-writing campaign to ministers and politicians to establish a “national” Mothers’ Day.

Then, a suggestion for honoring motherhood was made by University of Notre Dame’s first athletic director, Frank Hering. He proposed “setting aside one day in the year as a nationwide memorial to the memories of mothers and motherhood,” stating:  “Throughout history the great men of the world have given their credit for their achievements to their mothers.”

Due to the overwhelming support of pastors and churches, by 1909, forty-five states observed Mother’s Day.  People wore white and red Carnations on Sunday to pay tribute to their mothers.

On May 8, 1914, Congress designated the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day.

On MAY 9, 1914, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the first National Mothers’ Day as a: “public expression of love and reverence for the mothers of our country.”

English Poet Robert Browning wrote: “Motherhood: All love begins and ends there.”

Mothers have the role of imparting values into children, as American poet William Ross Wallace wrote: “The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world.”

This was echoed by historians Will and Ariel Durant in The Lessons of History, 1968: “Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted, civilization would die, and we would be savages again.”

On February 3, 1983, at the annual National Prayer Breakfast, President Ronald Reagan stated: “I have a very special old Bible. And alongside a verse in the Second Book of Chronicles there are some words, handwritten, very faded by now. And believe me, the person who wrote these words was an authority. Her name was Nelle Wilson Reagan. She was my mother.”

Reagan explained: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected,  and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

 

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