True Meaning of Mother's Day

The History and Original Intention of Mother's Day

In 1872 Julia Ward Howe, reformer and poet and the author of the lyrics to the Battle Hymn of the Republic, issued a Mother's Day Proclamation. She was the first in America to suggest that a day each year be set aside dedicated to honoring the ideals of motherhood and peace. For the next 8 years she celebrated the holiday, "Mother's Peace Day" with a group of women in Boston.

It is Anna Jarvis who is credited with bringing about the official observance of Mother's Day. Very attached to her mother, she conceived the holdiay as a remembrance of her late mother who had earlier tried to establish "Mother's Friendship Days" to heal the scars of the Civil War. She waged a successful campaign to have the holiday officially proclaimed Mother's Day in 1914 as a holiday to encourage children to honor their mothers.It didn't take long, much to Anna Jarvis' bitter regret, for the holiday to deteriorate into commercialism. Shortly before her death, Jarvis told a reporter that she regretted ever having started Mother's Day.

This Mother's Day, join us in celebrating EveryMother's Day. Let's return the holiday to its original meaning as a day of peace, a day to heal the cruelties of war.

Mother's Day Proclamation - 1870
by Julia Ward Howe

Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will 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 voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough 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 solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And 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.

Give an EveryMother's Day gift of compassion
in honor of the women in your life.