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Nelson’s Complete Book of Stories, Illustrations & Quotes A History of Mother’s Day

A History of Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day, in one form or another, has been around a long time. In ancient Greece, a celebration honoring mothers occurred every Spring.

In the Middle Ages, a custom called Mothering Sunday began when children, who often left home early to learn a trade or become apprentices, would be released from work every year on the forth Sunday of Lent to attend church with their families. As they returned home, they often took cakes or little gifts to their mothers. This was termed “going a-mothering.” To this day, Mother’s Day in the United Kingdom is celebrated on the fourth Sunday of Lent.

It was in 1872 that Julia Ward Howe (author of The Battle Hymn of the Republic) suggested the idea of Mother’s Day in the United States.

The cause was taken up by Anna Jarvis, daughter of a Methodist pastor. Jarvis felt the scars of the Civil War could be healed by mothers—and by honoring mothers. She died in 1905 before her dream of establishing a holiday could be fulfilled. But her daughter, also named Anna Jarvis, took up the crusade.

Anna had been deeply influenced by her mother, and she often recalled hearing her mother say that she hoped someone would one day establish a memorial for all mothers, living and dead.

Anna had been particularly touched at age twelve while listening to her mother teach a Sunday school class on the subject “Mothers in the Bible.” Mrs. Jarvis closed the lesson with a prayer to this effect: I hope and pray that someone, sometime, will found a memorial mother’s day. There are many days for men, but none for mothers.

Anna never forgot that moment, and at their mother’s graveside service, Anna’s brother Claude heard her say “… by the grace of God, you shall have that Mother’s Day.”

p 579 Anna thus began a campaign to establish a national Mother’s Day. She and her supporters began to write a constant stream of letters to ministers, businessmen, politicians and newspaper editors. She spent a fortune trying to attract attention to her idea, and took every opportunity to give speeches, send telegrams, or write articles promoting her cause.

On the second anniversary of her mother’s death, May 12, 1907, Anna led a small tribute to her mother at Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church in Gafton, West Virginia. She donated five hundred white carnations, her mother’s favorite flower, to be worn by everyone in attendance. On this first Mother’s Day service, the pastor used the text, “Woman, behold thy son; Son, behold thy mother.” (John 19:26) That same day a special service was held at the Wannamaker Auditorium in Philadelphia, which could seat no more than a third of the fifteen thousand people who showed up.

After that, things begin to take off. Various states jumped on the bandwagon, officially proclaiming a Mother’s Day each year, and, in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson officially established Mother’s Day a national holiday to be held on the second Sunday of May.

But having succeeded at last, Anna Jarvis soon became embittered by the commercialization of the holiday and turned against it, actually filing a lawsuit to stop a 1923 Mother’s Day festival. She was even arrested for disturbing the peace at a mother’s convention where women sold white carnations.

“This is not what I intended,” Jarvis growled. “I wanted it to be a day of sentiment, not profit!”

“A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world,” she said on another occasion. “And candy! You take a box to Mother—and then eat most of it yourself. A pretty sentiment.”

Shortly before her death in 1948, Anna Jarvis, living in a nursing home, received Mother’s Day cards from all around the world. But she told a reporter she was sorry she had ever started the whole thing.

We aren’t.

Nelson’s Complete Book of Stories, Illustrations & Quotes Someone Once Said …

People are what their mothers make them.—Ralph Waldo Emerson

• All that I am or hope to be I owe to my angel mother.—Abraham Lincoln

Introduction

James 2:1–26 NKJV

My brethren, do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with partiality. For if there should come into your assembly a man with gold rings, in fine apparel, and there should also come in a poor man in filthy clothes, and you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes and say to him, “You sit here in a good place,” and say to the poor man, “You stand there,” or, “Sit here at my footstool,” have you not shown partiality among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brethren: Has God not chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Do not the rich oppress you and drag you into the courts? Do they not blaspheme that noble name by which you are called? If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you do well; but if you show partiality, you commit sin, and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all. For He who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery, but you do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. So speak and so do as those who will be judged by the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment. What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble! But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? Do you see that faith was working together with his works, and by works faith was made perfect? And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” And he was called the friend of God. You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only. Likewise, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out another way? For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.

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