A Loving Mother...by Jim Terry

As I was sitting here contemplating the other day and thinking about this upcoming holiday called Mother's Day, I couldn't help but ask myself a couple of questions...

"Where did it start?" Where did it come from?" 

Well, with a bit of reasearch–so easy for us to do in this day and age via the internet–I was able to answer some of my questions and wanted to share some of this knowledge with you. The following information was compiled from an article that was presented on history.com. If you would like to read the full article you can find it HERE.

"Mother’s Day is a holiday honoring motherhood that is observed in different forms throughout the world, and Mother’s Day 2018 occurs on Sunday, May 13, in the United States. The American incarnation of Mother’s Day was created by Anna Jarvis in 1908 and became an official U.S. holiday in 1914. Jarvis would later denounce the holiday’s commercialization and spent the latter part of her life trying to remove it from the calendar. While dates and celebrations vary, Mother’s Day traditionally involves presenting moms with flowers, cards, and other gifts.

Celebrations of mothers and motherhood can be traced back to the ancient Greeks and Romans, who held festivals in honor of the mother goddesses Rhea and Cybele, but the clearest modern precedent for Mother’s Day is the early Christian festival known as “Mothering Sunday.” 

© History.com

Once a major tradition in the United Kingdom and parts of Europe, this celebration fell on the fourth Sunday in Lent and was originally seen as a time when the faithful would return to their “mother church”—the main church in the vicinity of their home—for a special service.

Over time the Mothering Sunday tradition shifted into a more secular holiday, and children would present their mothers with flowers and other tokens of appreciation. This custom eventually faded in popularity before merging with the American Mother’s Day in the 1930s and 1940s.

The official Mother’s Day holiday arose in the 1900s as a result of the efforts of Anna Jarvis, daughter of Ann Reeves Jarvis. Following her mother’s 1905 death, Anna Jarvis conceived of Mother’s Day as a way of honoring the sacrifices mothers made for their children.

After gaining financial backing from a Philadelphia department store owner named John Wanamaker, in May 1908 she organized the first official Mother’s Day celebration at a Methodist church in Grafton, West Virginia. That same day also saw thousands of people attend a Mother’s Day event at one of Wanamaker’s retail stores in Philadelphia.

Did You Know?

More phone calls are made on Mother’s Day than any other day of the year. These holiday chats with Mom often cause phone traffic to spike by as much as 37 percent.

Following the success of her first Mother’s Day, Jarvis—who remained unmarried and childless her whole life—resolved to see her holiday added to the national calendar. Arguing that American holidays were biased toward male achievements, she started a massive letter writing campaign to newspapers and prominent politicians urging the adoption of a special day honoring motherhood.

By 1912 many states, towns and churches had adopted Mother’s Day as an annual holiday, and Jarvis had established the Mother’s Day International Association to help promote her cause. Her persistence paid off in 1914 when President Woodrow Wilson signed a measure officially establishing the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day."

© Jim Terry (background photo)

So I not only give a big, "THANK YOU" to my own mother in heaven for all of her love and support but also to Anna Jarvis. I honor her for all of her efforts in creating a day for us to honor those very important people in our lives which we all call, "MOTHERS."  So take that moment today to celebrate that very important person who not only laughed with you but also cried because you cried. The same person that watched you grow. The same person that stayed up late peering through a partially cracked front door to witness your car pulling into the drive, even though it was way past her bedtime, to make sure you arrived home safely. And that very same person that will support and love you throughout your life despite all of your shortcomings, mistakes, and faults because they can still see your potential as their child. 

So with that being said, make sure to show your Mom you care. And whether that be via a box of chocolates, buying her some flowers, taking her out to dinner, a phone call to say, "I love you," or by a simple prayer in your heart if your mother is no longer here with you, make sure you do, because "of all the gifts that life has to offer, A LOVING MOTHER is the greatest of them all!"  

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

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