Dark histroy of Mother's day

Author Topic: Dark histroy of Mother's day  (Read 4111 times)

Offline Shampa Iftakhar

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Dark histroy of Mother's day
« on: May 10, 2015, 01:56:41 PM »
This year mother's day turns 100. We wish moms with passionate words and wonderful gifts. but this day also reminds a pathetic details of a mother.

It was founded for mourning women to remember fallen soldiers and work for peace. And when the holiday went commercial, its greatest champion, Anna Jarvis, gave everything to fight it, dying penniless and broken in a sanitarium.
It all started in the 1850s, when West Virginia women's organizer Ann Reeves Jarvis—Anna's mother—held Mother's Day work clubs to improve sanitary conditions and try to lower infant mortality by fighting disease and curbing milk contamination, according to historian Katharine Antolini of West Virginia Wesleyan College. The groups also tended wounded soldiers from both sides during the U.S. Civil War from 1861 to 1865.
In the postwar years Jarvis and other women organized Mother's Friendship Day picnics and other events as pacifist strategies to unite former foes. Julia Ward Howe, for one—best known as the composer of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"—issued a widely read "Mother's Day Proclamation" in 1870, calling for women to take an active political role in promoting peace.
Around the same time, Jarvis had initiated a Mother's Friendship Day for Union and Confederate loyalists across her state. But it was her daughter Anna who was most responsible for what we call Mother's Day—and who would spend most of her later life fighting what it had become.

Offline Shampa Iftakhar

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Re: Dark histroy of Mother's day
« Reply #1 on: May 10, 2015, 01:57:56 PM »
"Mother's Day," Not "Mothers' Day"
Anna Jarvis never had children of her own, but the 1905 death of her own mother inspired her to organize the first Mother's Day observances in 1908.
On May 10 of that year, families gathered at events in Jarvis's hometown of Grafton, West Virginia—at a church now renamed the International Mother's Day Shrine—as well as in Philadelphia, where Jarvis lived at the time, and in several other cities.
Largely through Jarvis's efforts, Mother's Day came to be observed in a growing number of cities and states until U.S. President Woodrow Wilson officially set aside the second Sunday in May in 1914 for the holiday. (See pictures of animal mothers and babies.)
"For Jarvis it was a day where you'd go home to spend time with your mother and thank her for all that she did," West Virginia Wesleyan's Antolini, who wrote "Memorializing Motherhood: Anna Jarvis and the Defense of Her Mother's Day" as her Ph.D. dissertation, said in a previous interview.
"It wasn't to celebrate all mothers. It was to celebrate the best mother you've ever known—your mother—as a son or a daughter." That's why Jarvis stressed the singular "Mother's Day," rather than the plural "Mothers' Day," Antolini explained.
But Jarvis's success soon turned to failure, at least in her own eyes.

Offline Shampa Iftakhar

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Re: Dark histroy of Mother's day
« Reply #2 on: May 10, 2015, 01:58:23 PM »
Storming Mother's Day
Anna Jarvis's idea of an intimate Mother's Day quickly became a commercial gold mine centering on the buying and giving of flowers, candies, and greeting cards—a development that deeply disturbed Jarvis. She set about dedicating herself and her sizable inheritance to returning Mother's Day to its reverent roots. (See National Geographic's pictures of motherly love.)
Jarvis incorporated herself as the Mother's Day International Association and tried to retain some control of the holiday. She organized boycotts, threatened lawsuits, and even attacked First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt for using Mother's Day to raise funds for charities.
"In 1923 she crashed a convention of confectioners in Philadelphia," Antolini said.
A similar protest followed two years later. "The American War Mothers, which still exists, used Mother's Day for fund-raising and sold carnations every year," Antolini said. "Anna resented that, so she crashed their 1925 convention in Philadelphia and was actually arrested for disturbing the peace."
Jarvis's fervent attempts to reform Mother's Day continued until at least the early 1940s. In 1948 she died at 84 in Philadelphia's Marshall Square Sanitarium.
"This woman, who died penniless in a sanitarium in a state of dementia, was a woman who could have profited from Mother's Day if she wanted to," Antolini said.
"But she railed against those who did, and it cost her everything, financially and physically."

Offline Shampa Iftakhar

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Re: Dark histroy of Mother's day
« Reply #3 on: May 10, 2015, 01:59:45 PM »
Mother's Day Gone Global
The holiday Anna Jarvis launched has spread around much of the world, though it's celebrated with varying enthusiasm, in various ways, and on various days—though more often than not on the second Sunday in May.
In much of the Arab world, Mother's Day is on March 21, which happens to loosely coincide with the start of spring. In Panama the day is celebrated on December 8, when the Catholic Church honors perhaps the most famous of mothers, the Virgin Mary. In Thailand mothers are honored on August 12, the birthday of Queen Sirikit, who has reigned since 1956 and is considered by many to be a mother to all Thais.
Britain's centuries-old Mothering Sunday, the fourth Sunday of the Christian period of Lent, began as a spring Sunday designated for people to visit their area's main cathedral, or mother church, rather than their local parish.
Mothering Sunday church travel led to family reunions, which in turn led to Britain's version of Mother's Day.

Source: news.nationalgeographic.com/.../140508-mothers-day-nation-gifts-facts-...

Offline irina

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Re: Dark histroy of Mother's day
« Reply #4 on: May 10, 2015, 03:43:53 PM »
It touches my heart.

Offline Tahsina

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Re: Dark histroy of Mother's day
« Reply #5 on: May 11, 2015, 10:11:15 AM »
Thanks for providing the background.
Truly speaking - Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day - all these days have become commercialized. In this materialistic world you can't do anything about this.
Tahsina Yasmin
Associate Professor
Department of English, DIU

Offline Afroza Akhter Tina

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Re: Dark histroy of Mother's day
« Reply #6 on: May 12, 2015, 10:29:49 AM »
The history is significant indeed to know.Thank you for sharing ma'am.



Afroza Akhter Tina
Senior Lecturer,Dept.of English
Daffodil International University

Offline Shampa Iftakhar

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Re: Dark histroy of Mother's day
« Reply #7 on: May 12, 2015, 11:43:35 AM »
I do agree with you, Tahsian madam. Now a day it is a fashion to celebrate. If we have the real passion and respect for our parents, we hardly need any old homes. At the same time, we can see the towering  love and gratitude for parents in a man or woman who do not what is Mother's day or Father's day.

Offline Afroza Akhter Tina

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Re: Dark histroy of Mother's day
« Reply #8 on: May 19, 2015, 12:20:03 PM »
Expressing love and care occasionally on some specific day is a personal choice indeed,we don't feel the necessity of it in our culture.We feel our parents and dear ones everyday...this is our strength indeed!!!




Afroza Akhter Tina
Senior Lecturer
Department of English, DIU

Offline nujhat.eng

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Re: Dark histroy of Mother's day
« Reply #9 on: May 24, 2015, 01:04:55 PM »
thanks for sharing. But I love to express with gifts to my mom but still feelings are unexpressed to her.
Nujhat Afrin
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Department of English

Offline Afroza Akhter Tina

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Re: Dark histroy of Mother's day
« Reply #10 on: May 26, 2015, 11:12:04 AM »
Your eyes speak Nujhat  :) you don't need to express your love with anything else




Afroza Akhter Tina
Senior Lecturer
Department of English, DIU

Offline Tahsina

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Re: Dark histroy of Mother's day
« Reply #11 on: May 26, 2015, 11:22:59 AM »
Oh! Wow! What a compliment! I wish . . . :-\
Tahsina Yasmin
Associate Professor
Department of English, DIU

Offline Shampa Iftakhar

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Re: Dark histroy of Mother's day
« Reply #12 on: May 27, 2015, 11:27:32 AM »
Feeling sad for you, Tahsina Mam. but you have your little mom!! :)

Offline ummekulsum

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Re: Dark histroy of Mother's day
« Reply #13 on: May 27, 2015, 12:50:37 PM »
 :)

Offline Afroza Akhter Tina

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Re: Dark histroy of Mother's day
« Reply #14 on: May 27, 2015, 04:42:54 PM »
Thanks Tahsina ma'am for the appreciation and yes...I have heard about your little mom  :)




Afroza Akhter Tina
Senior Lecturer
Department of English, DIU