Remembering Mom: An Ancient and Honorable Tradition

May 10, 2009

Mother's Day is more than a tradition; it's a celebration of a loved one.

If you think that Mother’s Day is a “Hallmark holiday,” think again.

It’s true that in the age of retail Mother’s Day celebrations have taken on a far more commercial nature, of which you could say the same for nearly all of our special days of the year, but the idea of honoring mothers is as ancient as the early Egyptians.

They held an annual festival to honor the goddess Isis who was commonly regarded as the Mother of the pharaohs. Her stern, regal figure shows her head typically crowned by a pair of bull’s horns surrounding a fiery sun.

The Romans continued the festival of Isis. Rather than celebrating the ancient mother of the Pharaohs, however, the Roman event was used to commemorate a great battle and to mark the beginning of the winter season. Although Isis was an imported deity, she nevertheless held a place of high honor in the Roman temple. The festival honoring her lasted three days and was marked by performances of female dancers, singers, and musicians.

In early European history, Christians on the fourth Sunday of Lent would return to the church in which they were baptized to honor their “mother” church. Throughout that week the church was decorated with flowers, jewels, and a variety of offerings placed mostly before a statue or icon of Mary, the Virgin Mother.

In the mid-1600’s, England broadened this celebration, by clerical decree, to include all mothers with an event called Mothering Day. Also celebrated during the fourth Sunday of Lent, servants and trade workers of the time were permitted to travel back to their towns during this time to visit their mothers and families. On Mothering Day the devout were granted a one-day reprieve from the fasting and penance of Lent and enjoyed a full family feast in which all mothers were honored guests presented with gifts of cakes and cut spring flowers.

The American celebration of Mother’s Day began in 1870 when Julia Ward Howe, who years earlier wrote, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, distraught by the devastating loss of life during the Civil War, called on mothers to raise their voices in protest against the cruelty of war. Howe called for an international Mother’s Day celebrating peace and motherhood with these words:

Arise all women of this day,

Whether your 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 of 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 women of one country

Will be too tender of those of another country

To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

Howe’s campaign to create an American Mother’s Day did not quite take hold, but instead lingered as a proposal that came up several times in the US Senate without success. Then in 1914, with 46 of the then 48 states holding separate Mother’s Day holidays, and after years of tireless campaigning by an activist named Anna Jarvis, President Woodrow Wilson made the second Sunday in May a day of national observance. Today, most nations around the globe have a day designated to honor mothers, from Canada, to China, Argentina to India.

It may have been a long and winding path to bring us to this special day to honor our mothers, but it was a journey well worth the taking. Mothers are the cornerstone of civilization. Whatever we are, and whatever we become, it all began with MOM.

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