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Call for peace: the history behind Mother’s Day

By Georgia Rossiter

May 5, 2022

Start the day in style: French Toast Casserole. (Cheyenne Cohen via AP) Photo by Cheyenne M. Cohen

It’s a celebration marked in countries around the world for more than 100 years, but where – and why – did the Mother’s Day tradition begin?

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A quick Google search will tell you celebrating mothers goes back much further than that, with the Greeks and Romans celebrating mothers with dedicated temples and festivals.

Mother’s Day as we know it began in 1870, when Julia Ward Howe – author of Battle Hymn of the Republic – established a Mother’s Peace Day.

She called for women to unite around the world to end war.

“Arise, all women who have hearts,” she wrote.

“Say firmly: ‘We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.’”

But it wasn’t until May 12, 1907, when Anna Jarvis organised a memorial for her late mother at a church in Grafton, West Virginia, that the official campaign to have the holiday recognised began.

A few short years later, almost every US state observed the day, and in 1914, then president Woodrow Wilson added the date to the calendar nationwide.