I’d like to share a little history of how and why we celebrate Mother’s Day.

Contrary To popular belief, Mother’s Day was not conceived and fine-tuned in the boardroom of Hallmark. The earliest tributes to mothers date back to the annual spring festival the Greeks dedicated to Rhea, the mother of many deities, and to the offerings ancient Romans made to their Great Mother of Gods, Cybele.  Christians celebrated this festival on the fourth Sunday in Lent in honor of Mary, mother of Christ. In England this holiday was expanded to include all mothers and was called Mothering Sunday.

In the United States, Mother’s Day started nearly 150 years ago, when Anna Jarvis, an Appalachian homemaker, organized a day to raise awareness of poor health conditions in her community, a cause she believed would be best advocated by mothers. She called it “Mother’s Work Day.”

Fifteen years later, Julia Ward Howe, a Boston poet, pacifist, suffragist, and author of the lyrics to the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” organized a day encouraging mothers to rally for peace, since she believed they bore the loss of human life more harshly than anyone else.

In 1905 when Anna Jarvis died, her daughter, also named Anna, began a campaign to memorialize the life work of her mother. Legend has it that young Anna remembered a Sunday school lesson that her mother gave in which she said, “I hope and pray that someone, sometime, will found a memorial mother’s day. There are many days for men, but none for mothers.”

Anna began to lobby prominent businessmen like John Wannamaker, and politicians including Presidents Taft and Roosevelt to support her campaign to create a special day to honor mothers. At one of the first services organized to celebrate Anna’s mother in 1908, at her church in West Virginia, Anna handed out her mother’s favorite flower, the white carnation. Five years later, the House of Representatives adopted a resolution calling for officials of the federal government to wear white carnations on Mother’s Day. In 1914 Anna’s hard work paid off when Woodrow Wilson signed a bill recognizing Mother’s Day as a national holiday.

At first, people observed Mother’s Day by attending church, writing letters to their mothers, and eventually, by sending cards, presents, and flowers. With the increasing gift-giving activity associated with Mother’s Day, Anna Jarvis became enraged. She believed that the day’s sentiment was being sacrificed at the expense of greed and profit. In 1923 she filed a lawsuit to stop a Mother’s Day festival, and was even arrested for disturbing the peace at a convention selling carnations for a war mother’s group. Before her death in 1948, Jarvis is said to have confessed that she regretted ever starting the mother’s day tradition.

Despite Jarvis’s misgivings, Mother’s Day has flourished in the United States.  In fact, the second Sunday of May has become the most popular day of the year  to dine out, and telephone lines record their highest traffic, as sons and daughters everywhere take advantage of this day to honor and to express appreciation of their mothers.

Did you know that:

• There are more phone calls made on Mother’s Day than on  any other day of the year. (Pew Research)
• The number of people calling their moms on Mother’s Day  has declined in recent years due to e-mail and other electronic means of
  communication.
• While nearly 80 percent of Americans will buy a card  for mom this year, 83 percent of the cards will be purchased by daughters.
  (American Greetings)
• Mother’s Day is the third-largest card-sending holiday.
• Mother’s Day is the busiest day of the year for  restaurants.

And now to share some advice I’m sure you’ve heard at one time or another from your Mother:

• Always change your underwear; you never know when you’ll have an accident.
• Don’t make that face or  it’ll freeze in that position.
• Be careful or you’ll put your eye out.
• What if everyone jumped off a cliff? Would you do it, too?
• You have enough dirt behind those ears to grow potatoes!
• Close that door! Were you born in a barn?
• If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.
• Don’t put that in your mouth; you don’t know where it’s been!

Did any of that advice sound familiar, if it did, leave us a comment on our facebook page, www.facebook.com/gourmetcaterers

Give your Mom a hug and don’t forget to tell her how much you love her!

Happy Mother’s Day!