The second Sunday of May is set aside to celebrate Mother’s Day and families in the High Plains uniquely celebrate.
Cards, telephone calls, dinners, and family gatherings are on tap as a day to appreciate the love our mothers poured on us when we least expect it. To understand Mother’s Day, it seems appropriate to have a brief history lesson.
President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation of the first national Mother’s Day just before the start of World War I in 1914, according to the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum.
Mother’s Day in the United States has a history all its own—and it’s more complicated than greeting cards might lead you to believe, the museum noted. There were repeated efforts to establish a Mother’s Day holiday and conflicting ideas about what it should stand for and how it should be observed. From a call for women to improve global policymaking and seek peace to a day to honor women’s work and role in the family, the history of the holiday reveals multiple insights into how mothers shape the world.
Julia Ward Howe, best known as the author of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” was an abolitionist, a women’s rights advocate, and a peace activist, the museum states. In 1870, horrified by the death and destruction she had witnessed during the Civil War and concerned by the Franco-Prussian war unfolding abroad, Howe issued what has come to be known as her “Mother’s Day Proclamation,” originally called an “Appeal to womanhood throughout the world.”
In it, Howe urged the creation of an international body of women who could find ways to avoid war and bloodshed: “I earnestly ask that a general congress of women, without limit of nationality, may be appointed … to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.”
When that didn’t happen, Howe sought to establish an annual Mother’s Day for Peace, to be celebrated in June. That did happen in a few places, for a while.
The version of Mother’s Day celebrated today is more directly rooted in the work of Ann Jarvis and her daughter, Anna Jarvis, who established the holiday to honor her mother. Pictured at top is Anna Jarvis around 1909. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.
My own appreciation
With the recent death of my own Mom, this Mother’s Day has a different feel. For many years, my gesture was to send a card and make a telephone call. When my parents moved back to Kansas it lent more opportunities to spend a day in church and have Dad grill a steak.
My brothers and I had some time alone at Mom’s memorial service and as we looked through photographs and reminisced about her achievements and milestones, we knew Mom had made many sacrifices. My brothers and I are all products of Mom’s thoughtfulness, kindness and behind-the-scenes work and we need to carry on her legacy.
We know that Mom’s influence remains a part of our DNA, and we are all the better for it.
At High Plains Journal I work with moms and it is a privilege that I do not take for granted. How they balance their careers while managing family operations I admire. I wish each of them a day filled with joy, cards and phone calls, and hopefully a steak dinner.
To the HPJ readers, take a moment to remember the strength of the maternal side of the operation and happy Mother’s Day to all moms.
Dave Bergmeier can be reached at 620-227-1822 or [email protected].
