Mother's Day
Today, Mother's Day is all about honoring our mothers. That seems so obvious that it's stupid to say. I'm so glad I was born to my mom; as the years have passed I've discovered more and more about the good that she's brought to my life.
It hasn't always been that way, though. Mother's Day started out going the opposite direction. It wasn't about the love and gratitude that we direct toward our mothers; it wasn't any action at all from us to our mothers; instead, it was something that emanated from mothers themselves.
Right after the Civil War, as groups sprung up all around the country bringing together mothers of men who had died on opposite sides of the war — a remarkable phenomenon in itself — a woman named Ann Jarvis got a holiday going whose point was to reunite families that had been divided, brother against brother or father against son, in the war. It was called "Mother's Friendship Day."
Meanwhile, another woman, named Julia Ward Howe, spearheaded a holiday she called "Mother's Day," in which mothers were to come together and oppose the more senseless acts of war: not the legitimate defense of country, but the wasteful foreign adventures that did nothing but decimate generations and bring loss and destruction. It was a way for women to protest in the only way they were allowed, these citizens who could not vote.
Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation, written in 1870, will blast the carnation right off your lapel:
It hasn't always been that way, though. Mother's Day started out going the opposite direction. It wasn't about the love and gratitude that we direct toward our mothers; it wasn't any action at all from us to our mothers; instead, it was something that emanated from mothers themselves.
Right after the Civil War, as groups sprung up all around the country bringing together mothers of men who had died on opposite sides of the war — a remarkable phenomenon in itself — a woman named Ann Jarvis got a holiday going whose point was to reunite families that had been divided, brother against brother or father against son, in the war. It was called "Mother's Friendship Day."
Meanwhile, another woman, named Julia Ward Howe, spearheaded a holiday she called "Mother's Day," in which mothers were to come together and oppose the more senseless acts of war: not the legitimate defense of country, but the wasteful foreign adventures that did nothing but decimate generations and bring loss and destruction. It was a way for women to protest in the only way they were allowed, these citizens who could not vote.
Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation, written in 1870, will blast the carnation right off your lapel:
Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.
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