Celebrations of mothers and motherhood can be traced back to the ancient Greeks and Romans, who held festivals in honor of the mother goddesses Rhea and Cybele.
During the 1600’s, the early Christians in England celebrated a day to honor Mary, the mother of Christ. The holiday was later expanded in its scope to include all mothers, and named as the Mothering Sunday. As Christianity spread throughout Europe, the celebration changed to honor the “Mother Church” – the spiritual power that gave them life and protected them from harm. Over time the church festival blended with the Mothering Sunday celebration. People began honoring their mothers as well as the church.This custom eventually faded in popularity before merging with the American Mother’s Day in the 1900s.
The American incarnation of Mother’s Day was created by Anna Jarvis. Following her mother’s 1905 death, Anna Jarvis conceived of Mother’s Day as a way of honoring the sacrifices mothers made for their children. After gaining financial backing from a Philadelphia department store owner named John Wanamaker, in May 1908 she organized the first official Mother’s Day celebration in West Virginia. Following the success of her first Mother’s Day, Jarvisstarted a massive campaign urging the adoption of a special day honoring motherhood. Her persistence paid off in 1914 when President W. Wilson signed a measure officially establishing the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day. However, once Mother’s Day became a national holiday, it was not long before florists, card companies and other merchants capitalized on its popularity. Jarvis would later denounce the holiday’s commercialization, and ironically enough she spent the latter part of her life trying to remove it from the calendar without any success. Mother’s Day has been celebrated all over the world whiledates and celebrations vary.
