Mothers's Day

Happy Mother's Day
From 101lifeStyle.com

Mothers Day History:

The history of Mother’s Day goes back centuries and the celebrations during those times can be traced back to the spring festival and Ancient Greece, given in honor of Rhea, the Mother of the Gods or many deities. In England, the early Christians celebrated a day to honor Mary, the Mother of Christ during the 1600s. But in the later years, the same day was named Mothering Sunday by a religious body and they ordered that the holiday was announced to include all women. This Mothering Sunday honored all the mothers of England and celebrated it on the 4th Sunday of Lent that is the 40 period leading to Easter. It is during this period that many of the people in England worked as servants for the rich people. Most of the jobs were far away from their homes, so the poor lives in quarters given to them by their employers and lived with them. On Mothering Sunday, the employer’s gave their servants the day off and encouraged them to return home and spend the day with their mothers. A special cake, known as the Mothering cake, was made especially for this occasion to provide a festive touch to this day.

With the spread of Christianity throughout Europe, the celebrations took a turn and was changed to honor “Mother Church”, that is the spiritual power that gave people of the church life and protected them from any sort of harm. Over a period of year, the church festival joined up and blended with the Mothering Sunday celebration. People began honoring their mothers as well as the church. With time passing by, this tradition which was followed ceased to exist slowly. The English colonists migrated back to America discontinued this old tradition and Mothering Sunday became a forgotten celebration due to the lack of time.

The British day inspired Mother’s Day in the United States, and was first introduced by social activist Julia Ward Howe. The carnage of the Civil War and the Franco Prussian War horrified Julia Ward Howe. So in the year 1870, she tried to issue a peace treaty at the International Peace Conference in London and Paris. Julia began a one woman crusade and appealed to all the women to rise against war during the Franco Prussian war in the year 1870s. She made a same plea in Boston that same year which is generally considered to be the original Mothers’ Day proclamation. It then got translated into several languages and distributed it widely. She promoted an international Woman’s Peace Congress in London in the year 1872. She wanted a Mother’s Day for Peace to be celebrated on June 2, which would honor peace, motherhood and womanhood. She initiated a Mother’s Peace Day in the Boston Mass, which was on the second Sunday in June, which became an annual event and for practiced for at least 10 years. This day was promoted to get women to unite against war. A Mother’s Day for Peace gathering was held due to her efforts in the year 1873 in America. It was then that Mother’s Day was officially declared as an official holiday. She made sure that this day was well observed every year and had meetings in Boston on this day. When she diverted her efforts to other important issues such as working for peace and women’s rights then these celebrations slowly died out. She failed to get recognition for a Mother’s Day for Peace. Her contribution is remembered in history in the sense that she was the founder to establish a Mother’s Day dedicated to peace. This led to the modern Mother’s Day celebrations and her contribution is a landmark in the history of Mother’s day. A stamp was issued in her honor in the year 1988 to acknowledge Howe’s achievements.

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