The forgotten origin of Mother’s Day: the pacifist proclamation against wars was far from the commercial celebration
Although many believe that Mother’s Day is simply a commercial day, whose origin is simply attributable to the desire to stimulate sales, the truth is that it was an anti-war proclamation and a call for a world congress of mothers, which began the the date in question.
It was 1870, when the American writer Julia Ward Howe, a pioneer of activism, the abolitionism of slavery and women’s rights, called on all the mothers of the world to rebel against the war, in a heartbreaking pacifist proclamation that is still fully valid. .
The proclamation called for an International Congress of Mothers seeking to promote alliances between different nations and the settlement of international issues without warmongering. The good intentions of the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, in 1908, would barely get her country’s Congress to vote in 1914, at the behest of President Woodrow Wilson, for the annual celebration of Mother’s Day. .
The idea materialized but never had real effects
Her idea of a congress of mothers failed to materialize as she wrote in those days that women “are more interested in promoting women’s suffrage than in devising a worldwide protest of women against the cruelties of war.”
His ideas, however, were taken up by Anna Jarvis, a housewife who organized women during the Civil War to work to improve the sanitary conditions of their children wounded in combat and in 1868 began to work to conciliate the neighbors of the Union and the Confederacy. Her daughter also Anna Jarvis, when her mother died, promoted the idea of Mother’s Day. In 1873, women in 18 American cities held a Mother’s Day meeting, and in West Virginia in 1907 the first congress was held, with little real effect.
Julia Ward’s original proclamation is still study material:
“Rise up, women of today! Rise up all those who have hearts, regardless of whether their baptism was of water or tears! Say firmly: ‘We will not allow matters to be decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands will not return to us for caresses and applause, reeking of carnage. Our children will not be taken away to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them about charity, compassion and patience.’ We women of one country will have too much compassion for those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to hurt theirs. From the bosom of a devastated land, a voice rises with ours and says ‘Disarm! Disarm!’ The sword of murder is not the scales of justice. Blood does not wash away dishonor, nor is violence a sign of possession. In the name of motherhood and humanity, I solemnly request that a general congress of women, regardless of nationality, be appointed and held in some convenient place, as soon as possible, to promote the alliance of different nationalities. the amicable settlement of international questions.