I have always found the history of Mother’s Day very interesting. It didn’t begin with flowers and brunch. It began as a war protest. Julia Ward Howe was watching the broken and injured men come home from war in pieces. She rose up and demanded that women take control of politics before the war machine funneled another generation of sons into it. It was the beginning of a peace movement.
I know you probably think that I am mistaken, that Anna Jarvis established this day back in 1905. That is part of the truth. But according to National Geographic, Julia Ward Howe established this day as “Mothers’ Peace Day. Anti-war activists, including Anna Reeves Jarvis’ own mother, Anna Maria, wanted to see peace spread across the globe after witnessing the great trauma of the Civil War here and the Franco-Prussian War in Europe. According to historian Katharine Antolini, “Howe called for women to gather once a year in parlors, churches, or social halls, to listen to sermons, present essays, sing hymns or pray if they wished — all in the name of promoting peace,”
Over time, a new concept took hold: that of the Mother’s Day we know today. After her mother’s death. Anna Jarvis began a movement in May 1905, in her home state of West Virginia, to honor her mother and all mothers. Three years later, West Virginia celebrated the first official celebration. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed a bill that recognized the second Sunday in May as a national holiday.
Anna Jarvis lived to regret her efforts, though. She saw it turn into a boon for commercialism. In 1920, National Geographic quoted her saying, “To have Mother’s Day the burdensome, wasteful, expensive gift day that Christmas and other special days have become, is not our pleasure. If the American people are not willing to protect Mother’s Day from the hordes of money schemers that would overwhelm it with their schemes, then we shall cease having a Mother’s Day — and we know how.”
Now may be the rallying time to honor mothers, yes, but to return to the original intent that Julia Ward Howe expressed:”Mothers’ Peace Day.” Her words from a proclamation in 1870:
“Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of 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 been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country 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 is not the balance of justice.” Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor 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 then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each learning 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.”
“If we want to reap the harvest of peace and justice in the future, we will have to sow seeds of nonviolence here and now, in the present.” — Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate, Northern Ireland
