The weather was a non event, as I had supposed it would be. But it was even more of a dud than even I thought. Our dewpoint at 1AM was still just 46. I told you that the data did not suggest any potential energy. Mother’s Day won’t be great as it will be coolish and windy. Should be some shower activity as well. Tuesday looks to be the best day of the week ahead.
Mother’s Day: I had always assumed that Mother’s Day was invented by some card company like Hallmark. I was wrong. It was just hijacked by the entreprenuerial spirit of America! There’s all sorts of stuff about it going back to the early church and then going on through the 17th century in Europe, still associated with the church. It had been to celebrate Mother Mary, then the Mother Church with Mothering Sunday. But when the folks came across the pond to America, the colonists were too busy working to do such things and it died out.
Then along comes the Civil War and a woman named Anne Marie Reeves Jarvis. She started “Mother’s Friendship Day” as a way to improve sanitation in 1858. During the Civil War she continued the practice by organizing women on both sides to try and improve the nasty situation. Afterword, she organized Mother’s Friendship Clubs to teach women the basics of nursing and sanitation. She also took the opportunity to bring reconciliation to the nation following the war. Anne died in 1905 and her daughter Anna missed her greatly. Anna felt that children didn’t appreciate their mother’s enough while they were alive. in 1907, she decided to start a day to honor mothers. She began a letter writing campaign to ministers and such an in 1908, the first Mother’s Day service was held in honor of Anne Marie Jarvis in Grafton, West Virginia, where she went to church for 20 years and her church in Philadelphia, the city where she died.
It caught on and in 1912 The International Mother’s Day Association had come into being and by 1914, a Presidential Proclamation by Woodrow Wilson designated the second Sunday of May as Mother’s Day. But Anna Jarvis’ happiness didn’t last long. It was in just a few short years that people started giving cards and flowers and presents and all sorts of things. It became more secular than what Miss Jarivs had envisioned. Commericialization had taken over and it continues today as Mother’s Day is one of the most financially successful days on the calendar. Anna Jarvis died as a cranky old woman who fought to oppose Mother’s Day. I guess she created a monster like Frankenstein. But not as much as the Postal Service.
Yes indeed…in 1934 they decided to get into the act and make a stamp to commemorate Mother’s Day. And what did they pick to commemorate the day to honor the wholesome beauty of Motherhood? The portrait of James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s mother! You look at it and try to figure out what they were thinking. It sure wasn’t “Happy Mother’s Day.”
