Spirit of peace inspired first Mother’s Day | May 12th 2007
By Jacqueline Dooley
“Let [mothers] solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means Whereby the great human family can live in peace”
- Julia Ward Howe
For me, Mother’s Day isn’t just about getting to do what I want, and being remembered and honored (translation: showered with gifts) in the process. It’s also about giving my kids what they want, and enjoying them fully without the distraction of work.
I almost wish Mother’s Day did not fall on a Sunday because, as a working mom, the best Mother’s Day gift of all is playing hooky for the day. What could be more deliciously rebellious than taking Tuesday off to drive to the Jersey shore and collect shells with your kids when you’re supposed to be on a conference call?
So it’s not too terribly difficult to pinpoint exactly what I want for Mother’s Day. In fact, I’ve already got the day planned out. I’m going to New Jersey with my family to visit my mother. There’s nothing better than having three generations of mothers and daughters together on Mother’s Day. I can live without the flowers, candy and trinkets. My number one desire is to have that time together.
Still, I’ve often wondered how it all started. Why is Mother’s Day on a Sunday and not in the middle of the week when we could surely use the break? Not surprisingly, the day began with a very hard-working mother and one truly dedicated daughter.
Congress, on May 8, 1914, designated the second Sunday in May each year as Mother’s Day, after Anna Jarvis began lobbying for the day to be set aside, according to a press release from the U.S. Census Bureau. She had organized observances in Grafton, W.Va., and Philadelphia on May 10, 1908, a year after her mother’s death, and the celebration began to spread.
Meetings in beginning
In fact, the very first Mother’s Day celebrations in America were not celebrations at all. They were meetings organized by Julia Ward Howe, author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” “who proposed renaming July 4 as Mother’s Day and a day dedicated to peace,” according to a May 8, 2004, presidential proclamation.
Howe, a poet and writer, was a working mother during a time when women’s involvement in anything but family and the home was frowned upon. She played an active role in the women’s suffrage movement and often spoke at the pulpit of her own Unitarian church. Howe had witnessed firsthand the carnage of Civil War and how it deeply affected not only soldiers, but widows and orphans on both sides of the war.
So the very first Mother’s Day in this country was organized not by a child in honor of their own mother (that comes next), but rather, by a working mother as a way to honor peace in a time of great national upheaval and war.
It’s difficult not to feel humble about what first inspired Mother’s Day in America. So even though I’m glad to honor my own mother this weekend, and be honored myself, this year I will also remember to honor the spirit of peace, which inspired the first Mother’s Day meetings so many years ago.
I also can’t help but feel grateful to both Howe and Jarvis for taking up their causes and working hard to put mothers into the forefront of national consciousness. That surely has helped shape the opportunities afforded to women (mothers or otherwise) over the past 100 years.
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