by Steven Skelley
I am one of those people who wonders why we humans do the things we do. Every time I hear a phrase like “Don’t let the cat out of the bag,” or “It’s raining cats and dogs,” I wonder why we say something so crazy.
I often wonder about why we celebrate certain holidays or why we have the traditions we do within those holidays too. One year, I was hired to create and perform a musical Christmas program. I put my inquisitive nature to work and researched the stories behind all our favorite Christmas songs: who wrote them, when, where, and why. The songs took on much deeper meanings once we all knew the stories behind the songs.
(photo: Sherill May McWilliams Skelley)
I was recently hired to offer a lecture on Mothers Day Sunday. I had written a song titled Thank You God For Making Moms and I had co-authored a book titled Every Day Is Mothers Day. I could easily talk about both of those but I wanted to go deeper. So, I decided to also share the history, the “why” of Mothers Day. Maybe if we know a little more about how Mothers Day came to be, it will touch our hearts in a new or deeper way.
This is what I learned…
In 1819 in New York City, Julia Ward (Cutler) Howe was born. As she grew up, she grew to hate war and the devastation it caused to humanity. Her hatred for slavery was as strong as her hatred for war.
She married Dr. Samuel Howe and the two of them founded the Perkins Institute for the Blind.
Julia was a radically outspoken woman for her time. She was also a songwriter. Her most famous composition is The Battle Hymn of the Republic.
After the success of her song The Battle Hymn of the Republic in 1861, Julia used her influence to issue her Mothers Day Proclamation against war in which she asked that women everywhere rise up and accept their responsibility to positively affect their society. Again, this was radical thinking in a time when women were not even allowed to vote.
It is thought that Julia’s Mothers Day Proclamation greatly influenced another radical-thinking woman named Anna Jarvis and therefore laid the groundwork for what we call Mothers Day today.
Ann Jarvis was born in West Virginia in 1864. She claimed to have been greatly influenced by her own mother and by the teachings of Julia Ward Howe.
Anna’s mother had bore 11 children but had watched 7 of them die. She then turned her grief into the catalyst to do many charitable works. Anna’s mother died in 1905, sparking something within Anna.
In 1907, Anna had a plan. She held a memorial to her mother and embarked upon a campaign to set aside a specific day each year for families to remember the mothers who had influenced them. Anna’s desire was for a personal, family celebration.
Anna promoted her idea by sending out over 10,000 letters to newspapers, church leaders, businessmen, and politicians until in 1910 the governor of Virginia made Mothers Day a state holiday and in 1917 President Wilson made it a national holiday.
Anna was adamant that her idea was for a special personal family day where children honored their own mother so she requested that the apostrophe in Mother’s Day be placed between the r and the s to remind us that this is a personal family celebration.
Soon, though, the holiday became very commercialized. The apostrophe was moved from between the r and the s and placed after the s making it Mothers’ Day (a day to honor mothers in general).
Anna came to hate the very holiday she had worked so hard to create. She hated how it had been corrupted by commercialism. It was no longer the personal reflective day she had envisioned.
Anna Marie Jarvis spent the rest of her life and her entire family inheritance fighting against the holiday she had worked so hard to create. She was actually arrested for disturbing the peace as she protested what her holiday had become. How sad.
Even though Mothers Day did not turn out the way Jarvis had planned, it still had a positive effect on many including a prominent American spiritual leader named Myrtle Fillmore.
Myrtle is considered one of the founders of Modern Thought teaching which leads us to think that we ourselves control the circumstances of our lives for good or bad. Her teaching affected thousands in the 19th century, the 20th century and today. She was called the “mother” of Modern Thought.
Every Mothers Day, Myrtle would go sit silently beside the hundreds of letters sent to her from people all across the country. She would thoughtfully consider her role as a spiritual “mother” to these hearts she had touched in some way as she read each and every letter from them and then she would close her eyes and “radiate” positivity back to those who had wrote to her but also to the mothers who may have been forgotten by their own children.
I hope this glimpse into the “why” of Mothers Day gives you a little deeper understanding of the holiday and of the people who gave so much of their lives to bring it to us.
As for me, I was born in Canton, Ohio in 1963 to Sherill May McWilliams Skelley. She taught me the amazing value of hugs and smiles and laughter. Mom’s mom, Virginia Margaret Wheatley McWilliams was her best friend as well as instigator and partner in their many silly and fun adventures. They modeled for me how great family can be.
I hope my daughter Steffany and I carry on their legacy of love, friendship and shared adventure.
by Steven Skelley
www.SunnyHarborPublishing.org
Steven Skelley is a published coauthor of Every Day Is Mothers Day, several nonfiction works and the novella The Gargoyle Scrolls. He has been a newspaper columnist, recording artist, travel writer, news writer, music director, creative arts director, theater reviewer and tennis instructor.
