Celebrations of mothers and motherhood can be traced back to the ancient
Greeks and Romans, who held festivals in honor of the mother goddesses
Rhea and Cybele, but the clearest modern precedent for Mother’s Day is the
early Christian festival known as “Mothering Sunday.”

Once a major tradition in the United Kingdom and parts of Europe, this celebration
fell on the fourth Sunday in Lent and was originally seen as a time when the faithful
would return to their “mother church”—the main church in the vicinity of their home—
for a special service.

Over time the Mothering Sunday tradition shifted into a more secular holiday, and
children would present their mothers with flowers and other tokens of appreciation.
This custom eventually faded in popularity before merging with the American
Mother’s Day in the 1930s and 1940s.

The origins of Mother’s Day as celebrated in the United States date back to the
19th century. In the years before the Civil War, Ann Reeves Jarvis of West Virginia
helped start “Mothers’ Day Work Clubs" to teach local women how to properly care
for their children.

These clubs later became a unifying force in a region of the country still divided
over the Civil War. In 1868 Jarvis organized “Mothers’ Friendship Day,” at which
mothers gathered with former Union and Confederate soldiers to promote reconciliation.

Another precursor to Mother’s Day came from the abolitionist and suffragette
Julia Ward Howe. In 1870 Howe wrote the “Mother’s Day Proclamation,” a call to
action that asked mothers to unite in promoting world peace. In 1873 Howe
campaigned for a “Mother’s Peace Day” to be celebrated every June 2.

Other early Mother’s Day pioneers include Juliet Calhoun Blakely, a temperance
activist who inspired a local Mother’s Day in Albion, Michigan, in the 1870s.
The duo of Mary Towles Sasseen and Frank Hering, meanwhile, both worked
to organize a Mothers’ Day in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Some have
even called Hering “the father of Mothers’ Day.”

Mother’s Day is a holiday honoring motherhood that is observed in different forms
throughout the world. In the United States, Mother’s Day 2024 falls on Sunday,
May 12. The American incarnation of Mother’s Day was created by Anna Jarvis in
1908 and became an official U.S. holiday in 1914.

Jarvis would later denounce the holiday’s commercialization and spent the latter
part of her life trying to remove it from the calendar.

While dates and celebrations vary, Mother’s Day traditionally involves presenting
moms with flowers, cards and other gifts.