Mother’s Day is big business. In our town, you’d better get to lunch early with your mother or you’ll both be standing in line.
It’s interesting to know that Mother’s Day celebrates the efforts of an industrious “social entrepreneur” and mother who changed people’s lives for the better.
The mother described reminds me of the woman of Proverbs 31:10-31 and like the spirit of many “mom preneurs” who want to prosper their families and who help others whenever they have the opportunity.
From the AmericanMinute daily ezine for May 9th with Bill Federer:
Mothers’ Day was held in Boston in 1872 at the suggestion of Julia Ward Howe, writer of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
But it was Anna Jarvis, daughter of a Methodist minister in Grafton, West Virginia, who made it a national event.
During the Civil War, Anna’s mother organized Mothers’ Day Work Clubs to care for wounded soldiers, both Union and Confederate, raised money for medicine, inspected bottled milk, improved sanitation and hired women to care for families where mothers suffered from tuberculosis.
In her honor, Anna Jarvis persuaded her church to set aside the 2nd Sunday in May, the anniversary of her mother’s death, as a day to appreciate all mothers.
Encouraged by the reception, Anna organized it in Philadelphia, then began a letter-writing campaign to ministers, businessmen and politicians to establish a national Mothers’ Day.
In response, on May 9, 1914, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the first National Mothers’ Day as a “public expression of…love and reverence for the mothers of our country.”
In his Mother’s Day Proclamation, 1986, President Ronald Reagan said: “A Jewish saying sums it up: ‘God could not be everywhere-so He created mothers.’”
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