As the Mother's Day is coing nearer I just wonder where didi it come from?
Mother's Day . . . Few of us are more than dimly aware of the history of our modern celebration of these extraordinary women. You can perhaps recall enough of the history of Mother's Day to know that it originated in the hills of Appalachia and is now celebrated in countries throughout the world. What you may not realize is that the founder of Mother's Day eventually confessed that she regretted ever starting the tradition.
In the United States, Mother's Day originated nearly 150 years ago, when Anna Jarvis, an Appalachian homemaker, organized a "Mother's Work Day" to raise awareness of poor economic and health conditions affecting the children in her community, a cause she believed would be best advocated by mothers.
Fifteen years later, Julia Ward Howe, a pacifist, suffragist, and author of the lyrics to the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," proposed an annual event called Mother's Day, but the idea received little support. She organized a day encouraging mothers to rally for peace, since she believed they bore the loss of human life more harshly than anyone else.
When Anna Jarvis died in 1905, her daughter (also named Anna) wished to create a memorial to her mother's work and began a campaign to institute an official holiday to honor mothers. The first Mother's Day observance was a church service honoring Anna's mother and all mothers that Anna arranged. She supplied the decorations for the service -- white carnations, her mother's favorite flowers, chosen because they represent sweetness, purity, and endurance. Today the white flowers signify that one's mother has died and red carnations in time became the symbol of a living mother.
I just bought my mother's favorite drama One Tree HIll Seasons 1-9 dvd and I will give her a big surprise.
