The Original Mothers Day Gift – A New Trend For An Old Festival
For an understanding of what makes an original Mothers Day gift, it's helpful to understand the origins of the festival itself. Whilst there are dozens of historical mother-related festivals, some as old as the Romans or the Ancient Greeks (both of which cultures worshipped the mother figure as a goddess), Mothering Sunday as we know it has a Puritan American origin and was only founded in the 20th Century.
The day was first declared an official holiday in the home town of Anna Jarvis, in Philadelphia. Anna founded the holiday to mark the occasion of her own mother's death. Ann Jarvis, her mother, had been responsible for a movement to establish a Mother's Friendship Day in the late 19th Century, which aimed at uniting mothers, whose children had been killed in war.
After Anna successfully founded the holiday to commemorate her mother's life and work, it was taken up nationally – first, by the State of Virginia, which declared Mother's Day an official holiday in 1910 and then by the United States as a whole, after Woodrow Wilson dedicated the second Sunday in May to mothers in 1914. The stated aim of the holiday was to remember mothers, whose children had been killed in war; the original aim of Anna Jarvis' mother Ann.
The original Mothers Day gift was a white carnation, apparently symbolic of the souls of departed children though in actual fact chosen by Anna Jarvis simply because her mother liked them. In subsequent years, enterprising florists tried to make the wearing of different coloured carnations symbolic of different things; red for a living mother, white for remembering a dead one.
In its modern form, then, Mother's Day has a root grown firmly from benevolent soil. Though its patina has been somewhat gilded by the desires of famous) greetings card companies, which still view the holiday as an opportunity to make more profit out of a single festival than any other time of year except Christmas.
The ideal Mothers Day gift is one that recognises the roots of the festival, which in turn is recognition of its own. Mother's Day is supposed to be about the bond between mothers and children and specifically about the sacrifices made by mothers to raise children properly. In some ways, the festival becomes both a social and a personal celebration. Without mothers, society wouldn't have any people with which to form itself. The specific recognition that mothers create members of society, who might be called to die before their time, first codified by Woodrow Wilson in 1914, ensures that a wider social meaning is attached to the day and to the gifts that mark it.
A gift celebrating mothers and their sacrifices, not to mention their vital contribution to the whole fabric of society, can't really be conceived. That's why most Mother's Day gifts are tokens, small emblems of an appreciation that can neither be put into words nor made into any physical object. In some ways, then, it will always be the handmade and original items that do the job best.
Summary: The ideal Mothers Day gift is something emblematic of a unique relationship between mothers and the world.
The day was first declared an official holiday in the home town of Anna Jarvis, in Philadelphia. Anna founded the holiday to mark the occasion of her own mother's death. Ann Jarvis, her mother, had been responsible for a movement to establish a Mother's Friendship Day in the late 19th Century, which aimed at uniting mothers, whose children had been killed in war.
After Anna successfully founded the holiday to commemorate her mother's life and work, it was taken up nationally – first, by the State of Virginia, which declared Mother's Day an official holiday in 1910 and then by the United States as a whole, after Woodrow Wilson dedicated the second Sunday in May to mothers in 1914. The stated aim of the holiday was to remember mothers, whose children had been killed in war; the original aim of Anna Jarvis' mother Ann.
The original Mothers Day gift was a white carnation, apparently symbolic of the souls of departed children though in actual fact chosen by Anna Jarvis simply because her mother liked them. In subsequent years, enterprising florists tried to make the wearing of different coloured carnations symbolic of different things; red for a living mother, white for remembering a dead one.
In its modern form, then, Mother's Day has a root grown firmly from benevolent soil. Though its patina has been somewhat gilded by the desires of famous) greetings card companies, which still view the holiday as an opportunity to make more profit out of a single festival than any other time of year except Christmas.
The ideal Mothers Day gift is one that recognises the roots of the festival, which in turn is recognition of its own. Mother's Day is supposed to be about the bond between mothers and children and specifically about the sacrifices made by mothers to raise children properly. In some ways, the festival becomes both a social and a personal celebration. Without mothers, society wouldn't have any people with which to form itself. The specific recognition that mothers create members of society, who might be called to die before their time, first codified by Woodrow Wilson in 1914, ensures that a wider social meaning is attached to the day and to the gifts that mark it.
A gift celebrating mothers and their sacrifices, not to mention their vital contribution to the whole fabric of society, can't really be conceived. That's why most Mother's Day gifts are tokens, small emblems of an appreciation that can neither be put into words nor made into any physical object. In some ways, then, it will always be the handmade and original items that do the job best.
Summary: The ideal Mothers Day gift is something emblematic of a unique relationship between mothers and the world.
