I was listening to Democracy Now! the other day, and Amy Goodman ended the show by wishing all of her listeners happy Mother’s Day. She also explained a little bit about the original purpose of the holiday. Activist Julia Ward Howe originally envisioned Mother’s Day as a day when mothers from around the world could meet and talk about ways to resolve conflicts peacefully. She began campaigning for the holiday in 1870 as a reaction to the carnage of the Civil War. This was all news to me.

Her work had been greatly influenced by Ann Jarvis, who created Mother’s Day Work Clubs in Appalachia in the 1850s to improve sanitation and later to encourage neutrality and the administering of medical care to both Union and Confederate soldiers. Jarvis also arranged Mothers’ Friendship Day, a day when mothers and soldiers from both sides of the war could meet and build new relationships. Ann Jarvis’ daughter, Anna Jarvis, picked up the standard at the death of her mother. With the aide of John Wanamaker, the department store mogul, she found more success in spreading the message. The first American Mother’s Day was celebrated concurrently in Jarvis’ church in West Virginia in and Wanamaker’s store in Philadelphia in 1908. The cause spread quickly across the country.

By the time it was declared a national holiday in 1914, it was clear that the original intention of the day had been lost. Woodrow Wilson declared it a day that Americans should show the flag in support of women whose sons had died in war. In fact, the origin of the day was even disputed by a other organizations wishing to take credit for its conception. The Fraternal Order of Eagles published a newsletter encouraging its members to take credit for the movement with the headline, NOW WE FIGHT!

By the 1920’s Mother’s Day had become so commercialized that Anna Jarvis no longer wanted anything to do with it.

With all the Mother’s Day cards and Mother’s Day special events that overwhelm America every May, I find it amazing that no one ever talks about the original meaning of the day. With that in mind, here is a passage from Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day Proclamation, written in 1870.

. . . Say firmly:
“We will not have great questions decided 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….”

I hope to see the pacifist message return to the spirit of Mother’s Day, but I am wary of a Mothers’ League of Nations. As another mother once said:

“I’m not a person who thinks the world would be entirely different if it was run by women. If you think that, you’ve forgotten what high school was like.” –MADELEINE ALBRIGHT

Happy Mother’s Day to Betty, Judy and Betty, and to mothers everywhere!