Reflections on Mother’s Day

                            By

                  Howard Richler

 

Mother’s Day arose in the early part of the 20^th century thanks to the efforts of  American Anna Jarvis. Following her mother’s 1905 death, she conceived of Mother’s Day as a way of honouring the sacrifices mothers made for their children. After gaining financial backing from a Philadelphia department store owner named John Wanamaker in May 1908, she organized the first official Mother’s Day celebration at a Methodist church in Grafton, West Virginia. That same day also saw many people attend a Mother’s Day event at one of Wanamaker’s retail stores in Philadelphia. Canada quickly picked up this habit of our southern neighbour and the inaugural Mother’s Day was celebrated in Canada in 1909.

Following the success of her first Mother’s Day, Jarvis, although never married or bearing a child, resolved to see her holiday added to the  calendar roster. An early feminist, she argued that American holidays were biased toward male achievements, she started a letter writing campaign to newspapers and politicians urging the adoption of a special day honouring motherhood. By 1912 many states, towns and churches had adopted Mother’s Day as an annual holiday, and Jarvis had established the Mother’s Day International Association to help promote her cause. Her persistence was rewarded in 1914 when President Woodrow Wilson signed a bill establishing the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day.

Jarvis had originally conceived of Mother’s Day as a day of personal celebration between mothers and families. Her version of the day involved wearing a white carnation as a badge and visiting one’s mother or attending church services. But once Mother’s Day became a national holiday, it was not long beforemany mercantile concerns capitalized on its popularity.

In fact, by 1920 Jarvis became so disgusted by the crass commercialization of the holiday that she urged people to stop buying Mother’s Day paraphernalia. She also launched several lawsuits against groups that had used the name “Mother’s Day,” eventually spending most of her personal wealth in legal fees. By the time of her death in 1948 Jarvis had disowned the holiday altogether, and even actively lobbied the government to see it removed from the American calendar.

Celebrations of mothers and motherhood can be traced back to the ancient Greeks and Romans, who held festivals in honour of the mother goddesses Rhea and Cybele, but the clearest modern precedent for Mother’s Day is the early Christian festival known as “Mothering Sunday.” Once a major tradition in the United Kingdom and parts of Europe, this celebration fell on the fourth Sunday in Lent and was originally seen as a time when believers would return to their local “mother church” for a special service. Over time the Mothering Sunday tradition shifted into a more secular holiday, and children would present their mothers with flowers and other tokens of appreciation. This custom eventually faded in popularity before merging with the American Mother’s Day in the 1930s and 1940s. Due to its religious connections, Mother's Day in the United Kingdom still falls on the fourth Sunday of Lent which this year was celebrated on March 6^th.

At times, Mother’s Day has also been a date for launching political or feminist causes. In 1968 Coretta Scott King, wife of Martin Luther King, used Mother’s Day to host a march in support of underprivileged women and children. In the 1970s women’s groups also used the holiday as a time to highlight the need for equal rights and access to childcare.

Perspicacious readers may have noticed that most languages seem to have a word for mother that is either “mama” or has a nasal sound similar to mama, such as  “nana.” Observe, Arabic ahm, Chechen, nana, Greek, mana and Quechua mama. The reason for this was discerned by pioneering Russian-American linguist Roman Jakobson. The easiest vowel sound for babies to utter is ah because  it can be made without doing anything with the  tongue or lips.   And when the baby closes her lips as is done in nursing this transforms the ah sounds into mahs

Of course the baby isn’t really speaking but is sounds like speaking to adults and as if the baby is addressing someone who most likely is the mother. Naturally, mom takes “mama” as meaning her, and when speaking to her baby refers to herself as “mama.”

As Mother’s Day is celebrated in over forty and in speaking to her child refers to herself as “mama.” countries, let me wish a joyous day to all mothers, wherever they dwell.

Howard’s latest book isWordplay: Arranged and Deranged Wit.