Most people think of Mother’s Day as a quaint and
conservative holiday honoring 1950s values, a sort of historical throw back to
traditional notions of hearth and home.
Let’s correct that impression by saying: Happy Progressive Mother’s Day.
In May 1907, Anna Jarvis, a member of a Methodist
congregation in Grafton, West Virginia, passed out 500 white carnations in
church to commemorate the life of her mother. One year later, the same Methodist church created a
special service to honor mothers.
Many progressive Christian organizations–like the YMCA and the World
Sunday School Association–picked up the cause and lobbied Congress to make
Mother’s Day a national holiday.
And, in 1914, Democratic President Woodrow Wilson made it official and
signed Mother’s Day into law. Thus
began the modern celebration of Mother’s Day in the United States.
Anna Jarvis intended the new holiday to honor all mothers
beginning with her own–Anna Reeves Jarvis, who had died in 1905. Although now largely forgotten, Anna
Reeves Jarvis was a social activist and community organizer. In 1858, Anna Reeves Jarvis organized
poor women in West Virginia into “Mothers’ Work Day Clubs” to raise the issue
of clean water and sanitation in relation to the lives of women and
children. She also worked for
universal access to medicine for the poor. Reeves Jarvis was a pacifist who served both sides in
the Civil War by working for camp sanitation and medical care for soldiers of
the North and the South. In short,
Mother’s Day was founded to celebrate a radical community organizer who favored
universal health care and was a pacifist.
The first Mother’s Day wasn’t sentimental or old-fashioned at all. It was about work, motherhood, health care, peace, and politics–and making the world a better place for women and their children.
Happy Progressive Mother’s Day! And give some radical women in your life a hug today.
posted May 10, 2009 at 10:32 am
My Mother passed away In 1966 from a brain tumor,when I was 11 years old.
She was born on Christmas Day.
But Im not sad,so on Chrismas and Mothers Day,I love to remember her
with Love in my heart for only the short time I new her.
Happy Mothers Day Mom.
posted May 10, 2009 at 4:05 pm
Thanks for this! Now I have a great retort to the comment “Mother’s Day is a commercial holiday invented by Hallmark..or florists.”
posted May 11, 2009 at 6:18 am
My mother drank milk, which she hates passionately, during her entire pregnancy and nursing.
For me.
She lost ten years of her professional career to make sure my brother and I had someone at home for them.
When I wanted to return to Europe in my teens, she let me go.
When I fell in love she welcomed my love into the family. When my brother and his red-nex kin rejected us and their lawyers made it clear that they would contest any will, she flew over to Europe and transferred the estate under her control to a trust, with my husband the beneficiary.
When we married, she walked him down the aisle as his parents were gone.
Today, she reads the final manuscripts of my publications. When I can’t decide whether a student has been creatively mistaken or mistakenly creative, I turn to her judgment.
And the same love and care and nurturing she has offered me, she has given my brother, while never losing sight of her love and responsibility to our father, her husband.
That’s a mother.
Oh, and she built a multi-million dollar corporation (back when that was real money) which today employs several dozen otherwise unemployable workers, giving them dignity, productive work and real income.
A pediatrics ward in the local hospital is endowed by her, she volunteers there on the days she can move, still.
That’s my mother.
Her Christianity embraces salvation as a beginning and shows, by her works, what being a Christian is as the fruit.
Not judgmental or exclusive, but loving and forgiving.
That’s my mother.
Boy, did I get lucky.