Mothers Day Origins

"Every day is Children's Day" I heard many times as a kid, and that surely is true. One day in May of official recognition is inadequate acknowledgment of all the hard work and love and sweat and tears each of you puts into one of the toughest and most important jobs a human can do: being a mother to your kids.

My gift to you again this year is a few of my favorite quotes on moms. I hope you like them.


"There was something so valuable about what happened when one became a mother. For me it was the most liberating thing that happened...Liberating because the demands that children make are not the demands of a normal "other." The children's demands on me were things that no one else ever asked me to do. To be a good manager. To have a sense of humor... And they were not interested in all the things that other people were interested in, like what I was wearing or if I were sensual. Somehow all the baggage I had accumulated as a person about what was valuable just fell away. I could not only be me - whatever that was - but somebody actually needed me to be that."
- Toni Morrison

"All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his."
-Oscar Wilde

"My mom is a never ending song in my heart of comfort, happiness, and being. I may sometimes forget the words but I always remember the tune."
-Graycie Harmon

"Mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts."
-Washington Irving

"A man's work is from sun to sun, but a mother's work is never done."
-Author Unknown

"You don't really understand human nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round will wave at his parents every time around - and why his parents will always wave back."
-William D. Tammeus

"Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body."
-Elizabeth Stone

"There is no way to be a perfect mother, and a million ways to be a good one."
-Jill Churchill

"God couldn't be everywhere, so he created mothers."
-Jewish proverb

Mothers Day Origins

Mother's Day did not become an official U.S. holiday until 1914, largely due to the perseverance of Anna Jarvis (1864-1948). Herself the mother of eleven children (four of whom lived to adulthood), Anna asked the minister at her church to give a sermon in her mother's memory following her death in 1905. He honored Mrs. Jarvis and all mothers with a special Mother's Day service.

Anna Jarvis then tirelessly wrote to congressmen, asking them to set aside a day to honor all mothers. In 1910, the governor of West Virginia proclaimed the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day. So as not to appear unsympathetic to their mothers and wives, a year later every state celebrated it.


Read more about these extraordinary women:
Rhea
Julia Ward Howe
Anna Jarvis

Contd.....

Many other cultures have their own Mother's Day, but let's move to Boston in 1870, during the unpopular Franco-Prussian war. An amazing woman named Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910), after writing the Battle Hymn of the Republic, made an impassioned "appeal to womanhood" to rise against war in her Mothers Day Proclamation:


Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise all women who have hearts,
whether our 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, the 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 of murder is not the balance of justice."

To no one's surprise, her efforts to establish a formal Mother's Day for Peace were rebuffed.

Mother's Day Origins

Mother's Day began with the Greeks, who worshipped the goddess Rhea who was the mother of Zeus, king of gods and ruler of Olympus (and you think your kids are successful).
Beyond the begatting, Rhea saved Zeus from being eaten by her husband, Cronus (as their previous five children had been). Cronus was worried about his children murdering him - as he had done to his own dear old dad - to supplant his alpha dog status. Rhea cleverly presented him with a blanket containing a stone instead of little Zeusie, which Cronus eagerly devoured.

With such a history, I think we can agree that Rhea deserved some maternal bragging rights and a holiday in her honor.