Friday, May 11
If your mother is living, you have likely already sent her a card (if she lives in another city), planned when you will call her, and if she is nearby, you are planning when you will see her, what you will give to her, and what you will do for her on Mother’s Day. The memories you have of her throughout your journey are indelible. When we were small, she really was omnipresent. When we grow older, we still believe she is because she can always find out when we misbehave. Never was there a child past or present who is not aware that “mom” has a network that can get regular reports of behavior and has a “sixth sense” that can detect whether we have been “naughty or nice”.
Moms come in all ages, all shapes, all heights, and all languages. They have many colors of hair (some of which is even natural!). They work like Trojans at home and in many cases, all day outside of the home. A mother can lift 8-40 pound children with a single swoop and yet love to have their husband open doors for them. They can shout at a child at 100 yards and “hit the target” and they can pray softly over a child at bedtime or when that little one has a fever. A mother has the ability to swat a child in mid air as she lifts a child from disobeying and yet can brush away a tear with great tenderness when a dirty knee is bleeding from falling on the sidewalk.
Mothers really are a unique, versatile, stern, sensitive, bold, bashful, correcting, and compassionate creation of God. No wonder we always have them in our hearts and can still hear their admonitions in our ears well into our senior adult years. This Sunday is a special day to honor “mothers”. I am very grateful for the lady who is my “mom”. She taught me humor, hard work, and honor. She let me get away with nothing and yet is still a great cheerleader of giving affirmation to her son. God surely was good to give each of us just what we needed when He gave us the one we call “mother”.
Where and when did we start this day to honor those who gave us life?
The United States celebrates Mother's Day on the second Sunday in May. Julia Ward Howe first issued her Mother's Day Proclamation in 1870 as a call for women to join in support of disarmament. In the 1880s and 1890s there were several further attempts to establish an American Mother's Day, but these did not succeed beyond the local level. The current holiday was created by Anna Jarvis in Grafton, West Virginia, in 1908 as a day to honor one's mother. Jarvis wanted to accomplish her mother's dream of making a celebration for all mothers, although the idea did not take off until she enlisted the services of wealthy Philadelphia merchant John Wanamaker. She kept promoting the holiday until President Woodrow Wilson made it an official national holiday in 1914. The holiday eventually became so highly commercialized that many, including its founder, Anna Jarvis, considered it a "Hallmark holiday," i.e. one with an overwhelming commercial purpose. Jarvis eventually ended up opposing the holiday she had helped to create. She died in 1948, regretting what had become of her holiday. In the United States, Mother's Day remains one of the biggest days for sales of flowers, greeting cards, and the like; it is also the biggest holiday for long-distance telephone calls. Moreover, churchgoing is also popular, yielding the highest church attendance after Christmas Eve and Easter. Many worshipers celebrate the day with carnations, colored if the mother is living and white if she isdeceased. (copied from Wikipedia – MOTHER’S DAY: HISTORY.
