By Martha Lannan, Voice Community Editor

Mothers, revered and respected in most of the world, have a special day of the year set aside in their honor in most countries. Not all regions celebrate mothers at the same time of year, but most cultures celebrate female parents as exceptional and notable.
The second Sunday in May is Mother’s Day not only in the U.S., but also in Australia, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Turkey, and Belgium.
In Spain, Mother’s Day is December 8, on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, so mothers in one’s family are honored, but also Mary, mother of Jesus. In France, a special cake resembling a bouquet of flowers is presented to mothers at family dinners on Mother’s Day, the last Sunday in May.
Different methods of marking Mother’s Day have evolved in the last several decades. Members of a number of organizations, including the League of Women Voters, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament, have organized demonstrations and protests on Mother’s Day.
The Million Mom March organized a massive demonstration last year on Mother’s Day in Washington D.C., with the specific goal of encouraging Congress to pass national laws preventing gun violence in the country, rather than legislation sought by the gun lobby.

Goddesses
Contrary to popular belief, Mother’s Day was not conceived in the boardroom of a greeting card company.
Female goddess figures have been found in many archeological digs, and it is believed that in prehistoric tribes the mother Goddess was worshipped as the creator of life.
In Egypt, Isis, the Queen of Heaven, ruled over all matters concerning mothering, and in ancient Greece, Rhea was revered as the mother goddess. In ancient Rome it was not only Hera, the jealous wife of Zeus, who was celebrated, but also another mother goddess known as Cybele, who had a festival in her honor in March. These March celebrations were so notorious that followers of Cybele were eventually banished from Rome.
Most mothering festivals in early history took place in spring, the beginning of the most fertile time of the year.
Brigid, and later her successor St. Brigid, were honored in the British Isles and Celtic Europe with a spring Mother’s Day, connected with the first milk of the ewes, beginning about 250 B.C.
Some historians believe that with the disappearance of a female deity, devotion to Mary, Mother of God/Jesus, emerged as the new Mother cult.

Mothering Sunday
There are at least two versions of the origin of Mothering Sunday.
Though formal mother worship was never completely eliminated in the British Isles, by the 17th century, Christians had nearly replaced Mother’s Day with Mothering Day or Mothering Sunday, which is believed to have begun as a religious festival during which people visited “Mother Churches.”
The tradition of giving gifts, flowers and celebrating mothers with festive meals has early origins, too. In England, children as young as eight or nine would leave home to learn a trade. For most of the year they did not get to see their family, but during Lent, the young people would be allowed to return to their homes and families from nearby villages for a weekend. This became known as “going a-mothering” as children walked the roads picking spring wildflowers to give to their mothers when they arrived back home. They often brought small gifts from merchants or nobles they worked for as presents for the family and would share a feast when they made it home. This feast day reportedly became known as Mothering Sunday.

Mother’s Work Day
The seeds for Mother’s Day as we know it today in the United States were sown almost 150 years ago when Anna Jarvis, an Appalachian homemaker, organized a day to raise awareness of poor economic and health conditions affecting children, a cause she believed would be best highlighted by mothers. Jarvis called this original day of recognition “Mother’s Work Day.”
Fifteen years later, Julia Ward Howe, a Boston poet, pacifist and suffragist, organized a day encouraging mothers to rally for peace because she believed they bore the loss of human life more harshly than anyone else.
When Jarvis died in 1905, her daughter, also named Anna, began working aggressively to establish a national holiday honoring mothers in memory of her mother. She lobbied businessmen and politicians, including presidents Taft and Roosevelt, to support her campaign for a special day for mothers. Woodrow Wilson signed a bill recognizing Mother’s Day as a national holiday in 1914.
At first, people observed the federal holiday by attending church, and writing letters to their mothers; later, sending cards, presents and flowers became more common.

Founder disenchanted
As gift giving associated with the holiday increased, Anna Jarvis became furious, believing that the day’s sentiment was being sacrificed at the expense of greed and profit. She filed a lawsuit to stop a Mother’s Day festival, and was even arrested for disturbing the peace at a war mothers’ group, where white carnations, her mother’s favorite flower, were being sold.
Despite the founder’s misgivings, Mother’s Day has flourished in the United States. In fact, the second Sunday of May has become the most popular day of the year in many restaurants, and the highest traffic day of the year for long distance telephone lines, as daughters and sons connect with their mothers.
Mother’s Day serves now, as it did originally, to recognize the contributions of women. It seems fitting that a day honoring the multiple ways women nurture their families and communities is celebrated in a variety of diverse ways.

Photo by Martha Lannan