Mother’s Day Origin
In fact, Mother’s Day does not have a commercial origin. From ancient Greece, there were celebrations at the entrance of spring in honor of Reia, mother of Zeus and considered the matriarch of all the gods. From the Old Age there are reports of rituals and festivals around maternal mythological figures and phenomena such as fertility. In the Middle Ages, there were also many references to the figure of the Mother, especially the Judeo-Christian symbolism with the figures of Eve and Mary.
It is common, in the contemporary world, to celebrate Mother’s Day every second Sunday in May. This date has become synonymous with affection and being especially considerate towards mothers on this day. It also is a day associated to consumerism. Despite the market bias, Mother’s Day is a date of singular importance for the Western world, especially for strengthening family ties.
But how did the second Sunday in May come to be considered, worldwide, as Mother’s Day?
It was only in the early twentieth century that mothers started having an official day to be honored. The choice of date (every second Sunday in May) refers to the history of American Anna Jarvis.
Anna Jarvis lost her mother, Ann Marie Reeves Jarvis, in May 1905, in the town of Grafton, West Virginia, USA. With her mother’s death, Anna, considering the suffering and pain she felt, decided to organize with the help of other girls a special day to honor all mothers and to teach children the importance of the mother figure. Anna and her friends were members of the Methodist Church of their town.
On May 10, 1908, Anna’s group managed to have a sermon celebrating and honoring mothers at the Andrews Methodist Church in Grafton. The repercussions of the sermon’s theme soon caught the attention of local leaders. Soon, state governor of West Virginia, William E. Glasscock defined the date of April 26, 1910 as the official day of commemoration to honor mothers. Soon the replication of the official celebration at state level spread to other regions of the United States and was also adopted by other governors. Finally, in the year 1914, then-US President Woodrow Wilson proposed that National Mother’s Day be celebrated every second Sunday in May. The important thing to note is that Wilson’s decision was taken at the suggestion of Anna Jarvis herself, who became internationally known as the Mother’s Day patroness.
What about in Brazil?
In the case of Brazil, Mother’s Day was celebrated for the first time on May 12, 1918, at the Christian Youth Association of Porto Alegre. But it was only in 1932, during the provisional government of Getúlio Vargas, that Mother’s Day was celebrated following the tradition from the United States, on every second Sunday in May.
Some of the above information is credited to Mr. Cláudio Fernandes, master in education.
Mother: a small word with an infinite meaning, because it means love, dedication, self-renunciation, strength and wisdom. To be a mother is not only to give birth but to participate in the life of her generated or created fruits.
We at TheFOB – The Finest of Brazil are extremely conscious of the deep respect necessary for the conservation of Mother Nature.
We wish all our readers a very happy and loving Mother’s Day and month of May!
