Peace on Mother's Day

Teach Peace Moment: Mother's Day for Peace

Mother’s Day is celebrated on the second Sunday in May.

Different countries celebrate Mother's Day for different reasons and on different days of the year. In the United States, Mother’s Day was created to be a day for peace. The first Mother’s Days were celebrated by peace groups often consisting of mothers whose sons had fought or died in the Civil War.

The Mother’s Day concept was influenced by Anna Jarvis who in 1858 created Mothers’ Work Days to improve sanitary conditions for both sides during the Civil War. In 1861 Julia Ward Howe wrote The Battle Hymn of the Republic to inspire Union soldiers to end slavery. She was famous in 1870 when she built on Jarvis’s work and created Mother’s Day for Peace with a Mother's Day Proclamation calling for peace and disarmament. The original Mother’s Day for Peace was for women to rise up and oppose war in all its forms.

In 1907 Anna Jarvis' daughter, also named Anna Jarvis, continued the effort for a peaceful and noncommercial Mother’s Day. In 1912, Anna Jarvis trademarked the phrases "second Sunday in May" and "Mother's Day", and created the Mother's Day International Association. Anna Jarvis broadened the peace focus to honor individual mothers for their contributions. She specifically wanted each family to celebrate their mother and this is why the apostrophe is a singular possessive and not a plural possessive to commemorate all mothers in the world.

In 1912 states declared the second Sunday in May a holiday and on May 9, 1914, President Woodrow Wilson declared Mother’s Day a national holiday. Unfortunately, he also changed Mother’s Day from opposing wars to a day to encourage support for wars. President Wilson changed the purpose by declaring Mother’s Day as a day for citizens to show the flag in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war.

Today, the peace purpose of Mother’s Day is often unknown. For most people, Mother’s Day is simply a day to say thank you to mothers with a pampering gift. The commercial dimension of Mother’s Day has made it the most popular day of the year for the restaurant industry and a top day for the jewelry, flower, and greeting card purchases. Had President Wilson reinforced the original purpose of Mother’s Day to be a peace education day, instead of receiving flowers, many mothers would have had the greater gift of a son not killed in war.

When Mother’s Day lost its focus as a day to oppose wars and teach peace, Anna Jarvis became a major opponent of the holiday. For the rest of her life she used her inheritance to reclaim the peaceful purpose of Mother’s Day and fight the abuse of the celebration.

We can reclaim Mother’s Day for Peace by educating family and friends about its intended purpose and support work to teach peace. For a donation of $25, the Teach Peace Foundation will send a "Happy Mother's Day for Peace" email or letter to your mother (click here for a sample email) and click on the picture on the left to donate).



Dave Dionisi, Teach Peace Foundation

Notes:

Carnations have come to represent Mother's Day, since they were delivered at one of its first celebrations by its founder. In part due to the shortage of white carnations, and in part due to the efforts to expand the sales of more types of flowers in Mother's Day, the florists promoted wearing a red carnation if your mother was living, and a white one if she were not.

In May 2008, the US House of Representatives voted twice on a resolution commemorating Mother's Day, the first one being unanimous so that all congressmen would be on record showing support for Mother's Day.

According to the National Restaurant Association, Mother's Day is the most popular day of the year to dine out in the United States.

According to IBISWorld, a publisher of business research, Americans will spend approximately $2.6 billion on flowers and another $68 million on greeting cards.

Mother's Day will generate about 7.8% of the U.S. jewelry industry's annual revenue in 2008, with custom gifts like Mother's rings.

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