The Roots Of Mother’s Day In America

While honoring our mothers is something we should do every day, the actual celebration of Mother’s Day on May 9th is a relatively new invention.

Certainly there have been days to honor mothers in European history. The Greeks celebrated a festival devoted to Cybele, a goddess identified with the fertile earth and motherhood, which most likely doubled as a holiday for mothers. The Romans had Matronalia, a holiday dedicated to the goddess Juno, wife of Jupiter and mother of several of that pantheon’s major deities. It is known that mothers received gifts on Juno’s feast day. There were numerous traditions in Christian Europe that dedicated a particular Sunday once a year to celebrate the role of mothers in society.

The modern celebration of Mother’s Day in the United States was actually of a political nature. It grew out of feminist peace movements in the mid 1800s. Mothers banded together to protest the brutality of the American Civil War. These groups were aimed at reunited war-torn families and increasingly the power of women to influence politics in America. Julia Ward Howe, early feminist writer and author of The Battle Hymn of the Republic, organized and celebrated a proto-Mother’s Day event in 1872. It was primarily aimed at promoting a pacifist agenda. The centerpiece of the event was the Mother’s Day Proclamation.