Mother's Day Beverly MA

One of the most popular, commercially successful, cherished, and sentimental holidays of the year is Mother’s Day, a day specifically set aside to honor, celebrate, thank, and remember mothers. Everyone loves their mother and although mothers should be celebrated each and every day of the year, Mother’s Day is an extra special day when children can express their love and appreciation for their mom.

Traditionally, mothers receive a Mother’s Day card, gifts, flowers, lavishes of love and praise, and acts of kindness—particularly a day away from their regular maternal duties and other special gifts and surprises, such as getting to sleep in and breakfast in bed. There are literally thousands of ways to make Mother’s Day a truly special occasion.

Mother’s Day celebrates all mothers—mothers expecting their first child, mothers of young children, mothers of older children, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, mothers with adopted children, mothers who gave up their children for adoption, foster mothers, mothers who have no children of their own, but are like mother figures, and more.

Although Mother’s Day is always celebrated on the second Sunday in May in North America, it is also celebrated throughout the world involving many different traditions, and on different dates and times of the year.

Churches tend to make Mother’s Day a significant part of their service, if not the entire focal point, as Mother’s Day in North America always falls on a Sunday. In Catholic churches, Mary, the mother of Jesus, is particularly celebrated and honored at this time, usually during the fourth Sunday of Lent.

The amount of mail being sent and received around this time of year, as a result of Mother’s Day in the U.S., can be quite astronomical. In addition, most phone networks in North America are tied up and busiest on Mother’s Day.

Mother’s Day in America is also the top holiday of the year for purchasing flowers—surpassing even Valentine’s Day. In fact, most flower vendors take advantage of this by hiking up their prices on or around Mother’s Day. Further, Mother’s Day is also the one day of the year with the most patrons in restaurants throughout North America.

The history of Mother’s Day is quite interesting. Many people may wonder about the history of Mother’s Day and how Mother’s Day even came about, and where and when and why it began. In fact, Mother’s Day’s origins are somewhat difficult to trace.

The reality is that Mother’s Day actually has more than one origin, and the true origin is disputed. This may partially explain why Mother’s Day is celebrated in different areas of the world on different dates and different times of the year. Thus, depending upon the culture and the country, Mother’s Day is celebrated according to local customs.

For example, many people claim that centuries before flowers and Mother’s Day cards, the history and special tradition of Mother’s Day goes back to ancient Greece, where it was the custom to worship mother-like goddesses.

Ancient Greece actually held annual festivals to honor and make offerings to Cybele, the great mother of gods, as well as Rhea, the wife of the god Cronus, who was the father of Zeus, and the mother of many deities. This festival was normally held close to the Vernal Equinox (in other words, the first day of spring, around mid-March), first in Asia Minor, and then later in Rome, Italy, where it was held from March 15 to March 18.

The history of Mother’s Day in the U.S. is actually quite interesting. In the U.S., the history of Mother’s Day actually dates back to around the late 1850’s, when homemaker Anna Jarvis created a day to raise awareness of her community’s poor health conditions and sanitation issues and called it “Mother’s Work Day.”

Then, in 1870, Julia Ward Howe, a social activist, poet, author, and pacifist, wrote the official “Mother’s Day Proclamation” during the American Civil War as a call to rally and unite all women against war and to promote peacemaking. However, Julia was ultimately not successful in achieving recognition for her Mother’s Day for Peace.

When Anna Jarvis died, her daughter Anna initiated a campaign in her mother’s memory and created a memorial day for women and mothers, which was first officially celebrated on May 10, 1908 at Anna’s church in Grafton, West Virginia, where she handed out white carnation flowers—which were her late mother’s favorite flowers—to all the mothers in the congregation. This practice is quite common even today in many churches. Further, it is not uncommon for mom’s to receive carnations for Mother’s Day today.

After that, the custom and tradition caught on like wildfire around the States and into Canada, and by 1914, President Woodrow Wilson declared the holiday “official.” Nine years later the special day became a full-blown, commercialized holiday in the U.S.—much to Anna Jarvis’ (the second) dismay, who became enraged at what her special day had become—a commercial, for-profit, gift-giving frenzy. Jarvis clearly wanted a day to revere mother’s everywhere, but the commercialization of Mother’s Day appalled her.

Anna actually became a vocal opponent of the day, filing a lawsuit to stop a Mother’s Day festival, getting arrested for disturbing the peace, and reportedly regretting having ever come up with the notion on her death bed in 1948.

However, to this day, while many are unfamiliar with the history of Mother’s Day, this special occasion is still celebrated throughout the world and remains wildly successful and popular.