Many of our most important national anniversaries have Christian roots. This is obviously true of such days as Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. It is also less obviously true of Halloween (Hallowed Evening) which once was closely linked to All Soul’s Day. Father’s Day, too, has Christian roots.
The first widely promoted Father’s Day celebration was held in Spokane on this day, June 19, 1910. Louise Dodd envisioned the event as focused in special religious services and involving small gifts as well as loving greetings from children to their fathers. She brought up the matter with her pastor and he communicated the idea to the local pastor’s association. The mayor of the city and the governor of the state endorsed her concept and issued proclamations in support. Even the famed politician William Jennings Bryan weighed in with words of support. The third Sunday in June was established as the date of the celebration.
Mrs. Dodd dearly loved her own father. When his wife died in childbirth, he was left with six children. Somehow he overcame the difficulties of rearing them and operating his farm. His devotion to his children sparked Louise’s inspiration.
Father’s day was slow to catch on. What Louise had done was not even well known in her own state despite the governor’s proclamation. The idea of honoring fathers with a special day was actually reinvented independently in several other places, each locality thinking it was starting something new. Curiously, circumstances led other founders to independently choose the month of June. By 1916 President Woodrow Wilson had endorsed the idea and in 1924 Calvin Coolidge recommended national observance of the day “to impress upon fathers the full measure of their obligation” and strengthen intimate ties between fathers and children.
The ideals of fatherhood are strong in the Bible. Unlike the gods of other religions, the Judeo-Christian God is portrayed as a loving Father. Christ declared God his own intimate Father and claimed to show in himself what the Father was like. God gave his beloved son for the salvation of the world. Consequently, wherever the Christian ideal has prospered, fatherhood has often taken on deeper and more lyrical meaning. The tender appeals of the apostles John and Paul to their “children” helped foster this attitude.
One man’s self-sacrificing love for his children led to a national day of recognition for all fathers. We have a grateful daughter to thank for that.
Moms are the best things that ever happened in the world. On May 11th every year, we celebrate ‘Mother’s Day’ as an opportunity to express our love, respect and gratitude to our mothers for all the things she has done for us. Alchemy Webmedia has tried to consolidate the origin, history, legends and stories of this very special day, just for you.
The roots of Mother’s Day go back to the ancient festivals dedicated to mother goddess. In the ancient Greek empire, Rhea, the wife of Cronus, and mother of Gods and Goddesses, was worshipped and honored at this time every year in a spring celebration. In Rome too, Cybele, a mother Goddess, was worshipped, as early as 250 BC. It was known as Hilaria, and it lasted for three days, called the Ides of March, that is from March 15 to March 18. In more recent times, during the 1600s, England observed “Mothering Sunday”, or the “Mid-Lent-Sunday, on the fourth Sunday in Lent. It was quite identical to the modern-day celebrations.
In England where small chapels of ease served the ordinary needs of the country parishioners, the people went on Mid-Lent Sunday to the ‘Mother Church’ of the parish, laden with offerings. The historians hypothesize that the Mother Church was substituted for Mother Goddess by the early church, who adopted the ancient Roman ceremonies in honor of Cybele to venerate Mother Mary. And this is why it became customary to visit the church on the day of baptism or on Mother’s Day.
The custom began for those working away from homes to return to their homes on Mothering Sunday with small gifts, or, mothering cakes for their mothers. Back home they presented their mothers with a cake and little nosegays of violets and other wild flowers gathered in the hedgerows as they walked along the country lanes. Whole families attended church together and there was a dinner of roast lamb, or veal, at which mother was treated as queen of the feast. Everything was done to make her happy. The custom of Mothering Sunday became more widespread during the 19th century. Any youth engaged in such act of duty was said to go ‘amothering’. They day was celebrated with a festive mood appropriate to that day. The prominent dish was called furmety. It was a dish of wheat grains boiled in sweet milk, sugared and spiced.
In the northern part of England and Scotland there had been a custom of having steeped peas fried in butter, with pepper and salt. Pancakes so prepared passed by the name of carlings. It was so popular that from it Carling Sunday became a local name for the day.
The mothering cake also went by the name of Simnel cake. This was a very rich fruit cake, the richer the better. For, the Lenten fast dictated that it must keep until Easter. First boiled in water and then baked, it sometimes had an almond icing. At other times the crust was of flour and water, colored with saffron. The word Simnel comes from the Latin Simila, which means high-grade wheat flour.
The customs of the Mothering Sunday in England started to decline with the changing pattern of the society following the Industrial Revolution.
In the United States, Anna M. Jarvis (1864-1948) is credited with bringing in the celebration of Mother’s day. Anna Jarvis intended to start a Mother’s Day as an honoring of mothers. The idea itself was so great that it did not take long to be spread all over. Leaving aside the first observance, the official recognition that followed for the observance came in galore. The governor of West Virginia issued the first Mother’s Day proclamation in 1910. Oklahoma celebrated it in that same year. It stirred the same way in as far west as the state of Washington. And by 1911, there was not a state in the Union that did not have its own observances for Mother’s Day. Soon it crossed the national boundary, as people in Mexico, Canada, South America, China, Japan and Africa all joined the spree to celebrate a day for mother love.
The immense popularity of the Day led to foundation of Mother’s Day International Association on December 12, 1912. Its purpose was to promote and encourage meaningful observances of the event across the world. It was in 1934 Postmaster General James A. Farley announced a stamp to commemorate Mother’s Day. The stamp featured the famous painting “Arrangement in Grey and Black”. The painting was a portrait of the mother of James Abbott McNeill Whistler, an English artist. It was brought in to the United States as part of an exhibit in the year 1934.
