Mothers Day

[buzorro]

Like most other holidays (including religious ones), Mother’s Day in capitalist America has been transformed into just another expectation of gift-buying and gift-giving.

What was originally a call to mobilize outraged mothers to keep their sons and husbands from going off half-cocked to kill and die for some corporate war profiteer or other, became just another opportunity to market non-essential consumer goods...

Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation of 1870:

"Arise then, women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or tears!

"Say firmly: 'We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies.

Our husbands shall 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 taught them of charity, mercy and patience.

We women of one country will be too tender of those of another to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.'

"From the bosom of the 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 does violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plow 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 of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at 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."


http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/050610a.html

[Guardian Angel]

The History of Mother's Day (another version)

Mother's Day as we know it today was established by Anna Marie Jarvis following the death of her mother Ann Jarvis on May 9, 1905, with the help of a Philadelphia store-owner named John Wanamaker. A commemorative service was held May 12, 1907 in the Andrew's Methodist Episcopal Church in Grafton, West Virginia where Anna's mother had been teaching Sunday School. But the first "official" service was in May 10, 1908 in the same church, accompanied by a larger ceremony in the Wanamaker Auditorium in the Wanamaker's store in Philadelphia. She then campaigned tirelessly to establish Mother's Day as a U.S. national holiday, and later even as an international holiday.

Mother's Day was made an official holiday by the state of West Virginia in 1910, and the rest of the states followed soon. On May 8, 1914, the U.S. Congress passed a law designating the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day and requesting a proclamation. President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation on May 9th in 1914 declaring the first national Mother's Day, as a day for American citizens to show the flag in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war.

Later, in 1934, FDR approved a stamp commemorating the holiday.

[buzorro]

The History of Mother's Day (another version)

Thanks for 'qualifying' that, GA, by putting 'another version' in parenthesis.  And actually you're non-linked post deals with the 'history' of the government's declaration of said holiday.  This is also mentioned in the article that I linked to:

... Then, on June 2, 1872, in New York City, Julia Ward Howe held the first “Mother’s Day” as an anti-war observance, a practice Howe continued in Boston for the next decade before it died out.

The modern Mother’s Day, with its apolitical message, emerged in the early Twentieth Century, with Howe’s original intent largely erased from the mainstream consciousness. Howe’s vision of an antiwar mother’s call to action was watered-down into an annual expression of sentimentality...

1872 vs. 1908...  Perhaps I should've 'qualified' the title of this thread, 'The Original Anti-War Mother's Day,' to clear up any confusion.  BTW, that is the title of the article that I linked to,...just in case, well...you know...someone didn't actually read it...

[Guardian Angel]

Regardless........................Happy Mothers Day to all the mothers out there and also to all the single fathers who have had to be both mother and father.  However, I think my sister said it best.  Every day is Mothers Day as long as you have your children to love.......  So it doesn't matter whether Julia Ward Howe or Anna Marie Jarvis's version of Mothers Day is celebrated........just so you remember mama!

[DejaVu]

LOL...I wasn't expecting to find a Mother's Day thread in the History/Archaeology board but it's cool. Hope everyone had a great day....I sure did!