When the young men of the early 1800s left home to travel across the Great Lakes to join the fur trade, they didn’t know when or if they would ever return to the home of their parents. The same was true for the early pioneers and settlers who arrived in northern Wisconsin in the mid-to-late 1800s, especially if their homeland was across the Atlantic Ocean.
Though they probably thought about home, family and friends throughout the year, there was no special day like “Mother’s Day” when everyone would be thinking about that special person who had been so important in their young lives.
Mother’s Day became a national holiday in the United States in 1914. This wasn’t the first time in history that a culture decided to honor mothers, though there was a major difference between ancient times and now. The earliest known celebrations for mothers started around 3,000 B.C. and honored a mother-goddess, such as Durga in ancient India or Isis in ancient Egypt.
Many of these celebrations were held in the spring, a time when the fertility of the earth was on full display. These include the ancient Greek festival for Rhea, known as the Mother of Gods and the celebration in Ireland for the goddess of the spring, Brigid, who was the protector of mothers and children. The spring Chinese festival for Xi Wangmu, the goddess Queen Mother of the West, usually included a family outing, so it grew into a special day for human mothers, also.
The Roman festival Matronalia honored Juno, the goddess of women, marriage, and fertility, and protector of pregnant women and childbirth. It was held on March 1 which was the first day of the year in the ancient Roman calendar, which means the Romans began the year by celebrating motherhood. As part of the celebration, husbands gave gifts to their wives and women cooked a special meal for all their female servants.
Fast forward to the 15th century and we see another celebration that expanded to include all mothers. In Ireland and Great Britain, Mothering Sunday was a day when Christians returned to their “mother” church, i.e., the church where they were baptized, for a special religious service that honored the church that mothered them. If their mother church was too far away, they would go to the nearest church. Domestic servants were given time off to visit their mother churches. Eventually, servants were given the full day off so that they could visit their human mothers, also. This became a day of family reunions, as adult children returned to their mother’s homes to celebrate the day with their mothers and all their family members. Children would pick flowers along the way to give to their mothers and grandmothers, starting the tradition of giving gifts to mothers.
After the Civil War through the 1880s, different versions of Mother’s Day were promoted but the focus of these days wasn’t on honoring mothers. Instead, each was focused on encouraging mothers to become more active in helping others, such as advocating for temperance (no drinking of alcohol), campaigning for a woman’s right to vote, helping former Union and Confederate soldiers to reconcile with each other, promoting peace and mandating a permanent end to slavery. Ann Reeves Jarvis was one of the leading promoters of some of these ideas but the efforts had limited success.
In 1904, Frank Hering, a faculty member at the University of Notre Dame in northern Indiana, noticed a group of university students mailing “penny postcards” to their mothers. He decided to promote the idea of having a special day each year that honors motherhood. Members of the Fraternal Order of Eagles in Indianapolis joined Hering’s efforts to establish a Mother’s Day.
In 1905, after Ann Reeves Jarvis died, her daughter Anna Jarvis had a similar idea. She thought that her mother’s efforts and those of other mothers should be honored. She proposed a national Mother’s Day holiday that honored the sacrifices that mothers make for their children. With the help of others, the first official Mother’s Day with this new focus was celebrated in 1908 in two cities, one in West Virginia where Jarvis lived and the other in Philadelphia.
By 1912, many cities and states were celebrating Mother’s Day. In 1914, a proclamation by President Woodrow Wilson made the second Sunday in May, Mother’s Day, a “public expression of our love and reverence for the mothers of our country.”
In the early years of this national holiday, people celebrated by attending church, writing letters to their mothers, visiting them and bringing their mothers a white carnation which was the favorite flower of Ann Reeves Jarvis. Anna Jarvis thought the carnation was the perfect flower to symbolize a mother’s love because it never drops its petals but holds them close to its center in the same way that mothers hug their children in the center of their hearts.
These simple acts to honor mothers were quickly overwhelmed as businesses found ways to capitalize on the holiday. Greeting cards, jewelry and bouquets of flowers are among the many gifts that mothers now receive. In 2022, almost $32 billion was spent in the United States on Mother’s Day gifts; that’s an average of $245 per mother. Mother's Day is the most popular day of the year to eat in a restaurant. And, more phone calls are made on Mother’s Day than any other day of the year.
This year, Mother’s Day is Sunday, May 14. Hopefully, all mothers and those who have a mothering role in someone’s life will feel cherished on that day.
