Saturday, May 12, 2012

Mother's Day and Peace




Wishing you all a very happy Mother's Day!


Do you know that Mother's Day evolved from mothers meeting together to promote peace?  

According to many sources and Wikipedia the first attempts to establish a "Mother's Day" in the U.S. were mostly marked by women's peace groups.A common early activity was the meeting of groups of mothers whose sons had fought or died on opposite sides of the American Civil War. There were several limited observances in the 1870s and the 1880s but none achieved resonance beyond the local level.

In 1868 Ann Jarvis created a committee to establish a "Mother's Friendship Day" whose purpose was "to reunite families that had been divided during the Civil War", and she wanted to expand it into an annual memorial for mothers, but she died in 1905 before the celebration became popular. Her daughter Anna Jarvis would continue her mother's efforts.


Women have been in the forefront of peace movements to save their children from that horredous experience and to try and unite people to make a better world for everyone.


Marrying promoting peace with honoring mothers is a powerful idea. Now let's do it!











5 comments:

Gail Roughton said...

Beautiful sentiment, beautiful goal. Happy Mother's Day, all!

Penny's Tales said...

Very interesting....I did not know that! I just figured there was a mother's day because we earn it! LOL

Nice job

Pat McDermott said...

Interesting history, Janet. I didn't know about the Civil War connection to Mother's Day. This is yet another indication of a holiday that has blood, sweat, and tears behind it, one which we now take for granted, expecting dinners out and flowers and such. Nice reminder, as is the idea of melding the promotion of peace with honoring mothers.

Joylene Nowell Butler said...

I had no idea. Thanks for sharing this, Janet. Goodness, I'm suddenly overwhelmed with pride. Ha, and I most certainly wasn't alive during the Civil War. I have a son who's a sergeant in the Army though, so boy can I relate to those women.

J.Q. Rose said...

Don't you think a bunch of determined moms working together to keep their children from war could change the world? If only we could all get together, world-wide, to promote peace. Money spent on war could be used to educate, feed the hungry, teach how to use a country's resources, build shelters, drill wells for clean water....If only,,,,

Thanks so much for your comments. I'm glad you found the history of Mother's Day interesting and informative. Happy Mother's Day to all!

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