Mum's the word - and has been for some time

The Mother's Day tradition has a long history.

This Sunday, mums around the world are acknowledged by Mother's Day, but this modern celebration has roots from long ago, as Lynne Beaven reveals.

The ancient people of Phrygia in Asia Minor may have been the first to celebrate and honour a mother.

Wonderful stories were woven of gods and goddesses who moved the sun across the sky and twinkled the stars at night. Their most important goddess was Cybele, the daughter of Heaven and Earth, considered to be the mother of all the gods. A festival was held once a year in her honour.

Likewise, the ancient Greeks had a powerful goddess, Rhea, believed to be mother to all gods and spring celebrations took place in her honour.

In typical Roman grandeur, a temple was built on Palatine Hill in Rome for Magna Mater, or Great Mother. Each year from March 15, a three-day celebration was held to honour this powerful mother goddess. It was called the Festival of Hilaria and gifts were brought to the temple to please her.

With the advent of Christianity, a celebration was held to honour the "Mother Church". On the fourth Sunday in Lent people brought gifts to the church where they had been baptised. Some countries still continue the English tradition of celebrating Mother's Day on the fourth Sunday in Lent.

On that same day in the 1600s another kind of celebration began called "Mothering Sunday". Many of England's poor children were working as servants for the wealthy,
usually living far from their homes. Mothering Sunday was considered an annual day off for these young servants and they were told to go home to be with their mothers.

This custom, called "a-mothering", often included the so-called "mothering cake" as a gift.

American Anna Jarvis, who died in 1948 at the age of 84, was a social activist who founded Mother’s Day Work Clubs and was the inspiration for the modern Mother’s Day.

However, the first English settlers in America didn't find time for such festivities and Mothering Sunday was not continued until 1872. The first suggestion for a Mother's Day in America was made by Julia Ward Howe (lyricist of the The Battle Hymn of the Republic). Her initiative did reinstate an annual Mothers' Day but only in Boston, Massachusetts.

The real founder of Mother's Day in America is considered to be Anna Jarvis, who campaigned for the celebration in Philadelphia in 1907. All through her childhood, following the Civil War, Anna had heard her mother's conviction that if families honoured their mothers on a special day, the ongoing hatred would end.

The result of her campaign was a Mother's Day service in West Virginia on the anniversary of her mother's death, the second Sunday of May. Soon almost every state was celebrating on this day, prompting President Woodrow Wilson, in 1914, to proclaim Mother's Day as a national holiday.

Anna's endeavours continued and, by the time of her death in 1948, her idea had spread around the world and more than 40 countries observed Mother's Day.

The day and manner of the celebration differ throughout the world but, as in ancient times, it still remains a day dedicated to honouring mothers.