Mother's day

Mother's Day is a celebration that honours mothers and motherhood, maternal bonds, and the influence of mothers in society. It is celebrated on various days in many parts of the world, most commonly in March, April, or May. It complements Father's Day, a celebration honoring fathers.

Celebrations of mothers and motherhood occur throughout the world. Many of these trace back to ancient festivals, like the Greek cult to Cybele, the Roman festival of Hilaria, or the Christian Mothering Sunday celebration. However, the modern holiday is an American invention and not directly descended from these celebrations. Despite this, in some countries Mother's Day has become synonymous with these older traditions.

Julia Ward Howe was the first to proclaim Mother's Day in 1870. Her Mother's Day Proclamation was a pacifist reaction to the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War. The modern holiday of Mother's Day was first celebrated in 1908, when Anna Jarvis held a memorial for her mother in America. She then began a campaign to make "Mother's Day" a recognized holiday in the United States. Although she was successful in 1914, she was already disappointed with its commercialization by the 1920s. Jarvis' holiday was adopted by other countries and it's now celebrated all over the world.

In 1912, Anna Jarvis trademarked the phrases "second Sunday in May" and "Mother's Day", and created the Mother's Day International Association.

She was specific about the location of the apostrophe; it was to be a singular possessive, for each family to honour their mother, not a plural possessive commemorating all mothers in the world.

This is also the spelling used by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson in the law making official the holiday in the United States, by the U.S. Congress on bills, and by other U.S. presidents on their declarations.

As the American holiday was adopted by other countries and cultures, the date was changed to fit already existing celebrations honoring motherhood.

Mothering Sunday in the United Kingdom or, in Greece, the Orthodox celebration of the presentation of Jesus Christ to the temple (2 February). Mothering Sunday is often referred to as "Mother's Day" even though it is an unrelated celebration.

In some countries the date was changed to one that was significant to the majority religion, such as Virgin Mary day in Catholic countries. Other countries selected a date with historical significance, such as Bolivia using the date of a battle where women participated.

Common usage in English language also dictates that the ostensibly singular possessive "Mother's Day" is the preferred spelling, although "Mothers' Day" (plural possessive) or "Mothers Day" (plural non-possessive) are sometimes used.

In most countries, Mother's Day is a recent observance derived from the holiday as it has evolved in the United States. When it was adopted by other countries and cultures, it was given different meanings, associated to different events (religious, historical or legendary), and celebrated on a different date or dates.

Some countries already had existing celebrations honoring motherhood, and their celebrations have adopted several external characteristics from the American holiday, like giving carnations and other presents to your own mother.

The extent of the celebrations varies greatly. In some countries, it is potentially offensive to one's mother not to mark Mother's Day. In others, it is a little-known festival celebrated mainly by immigrants, or covered by the media as a taste of foreign culture.


In the Roman Catholic Church, the holiday is strongly associated with reverencing the Virgin Mary. In many Catholic homes, families have a special shrine devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary. In many Eastern Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, a special prayer service is held in honor of the Theotokos Virgin Mary.

Nine years after the first official United States Mother's Day, commercialization of the holiday became so rampant that Anna Jarvis herself became a major opponent of what the holiday had become and spent all her inheritance and the rest of her life fighting what she saw as an abuse of the celebration.

Later commercial and other exploitations of the use of Mother's Day infuriated Jarvis and she made her criticisms explicitly known the rest of her life. She criticized the practice of purchasing greeting cards, which she saw as a sign of being too lazy to write a personal letter. She was arrested in 1948 for disturbing the peace while protesting against the commercialization of Mother's Day, and she finally said that she "wished she would have never started the day because it became so out of control ...".

Mother's Day continues to be one of the most commercially successful U.S. occasions.

It is possible that the holiday would have withered over time without the support and continuous promotion of the florist industries and other commercial industries. Other Protestant holidays from the same time, like Children's Day and Temperance Sunday, do not have the same level of popularity. Mother's Day is also prominent in the Sunday comic strips in the newspapers of the United States, ranging from sentimental to wry to caustic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Day