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It became a national holiday in the US in 1914. Julia Ward Howe wrote the Mother's Day Proclamation in 1870, as a call for peace and disarmament.

Different countries celebrate Mother's Day on various days of the year because the day has a number of different origins. One school of thought claims this day emerged from a custom of mother worship in ancient Greece. Mother worship — which kept a festival to Cybele, a great mother of gods, and Rhea, the wife of Cronus — was held around the Vernal Equinox around Asia Minor and eventually in Rome itself from the Ides of March (March 15) to March 18.

In the United States, Mother's Day was originally conceived by social activist Julia Ward Howe during the American Civil War with a call to unite women against war. She wrote the Mother's Day Proclamation. In the United States, the day now simply celebrates motherhood and thanking mothers.

In most countries, Mother's Day is a new concept copied from western civilization. In many African countries, Mother's Day has its origins in copying the British concept. In most of East Asia, Mother's Day is a heavily marketed and commercialized concept copied straight from Mother's Day in the USA.

Different countries celebrate Mother's Day on various days of the year because the day has a number of different origins. One school of thought claims this day emerged from a custom of mother worship in ancient Greece. Mother worship — which kept a festival to Cybele, a great mother of gods, and Rhea, the wife of Cronus — was held around the Vernal Equinox around Asia Minor and eventually in Rome itself from the Ides of March (March 15) to March 18.

In the United States, Mother's Day was originally conceived by social activist Julia Ward Howe during the American Civil War with a call to unite women against war. She wrote the Mother's Day Proclamation. In the United States, the day now simply celebrates motherhood and thanking mothers.

In most countries, Mother's Day is a new concept copied from western civilization. In many African countries, Mother's Day has its origins in copying the British concept. In most of East Asia, Mother's Day is a heavily marketed and commercialized concept copied straight from Mother's Day in the USA.

Howe failed in her attempt to get formal recognition of a Mother's Day for Peace. Her idea was influenced by Anna Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker who, starting in 1858, had attempted to improve sanitation through what she called Mothers' Work Days. She organized women throughout the Civil War to work for better sanitary conditions for both sides, and in 1868 she began work to reconcile Union and Confederate neighbors.

Jarvis' daughter, also named Anna Jarvis, would, of course, have known of her mother's work, and the work of Howe. Much later, when her mother died, this second Anna Jarvis started her own crusade to found a memorial day for women. The first such Mother's Day was celebrated in Grafton, West Virginia, on May 10, 1908, in the church where the elder Anna Jarvis had taught Sunday School. Grafton is the home to the International Mother's Day Shrine. From there, the custom caught on — spreading eventually to 45 states. The holiday was declared officially by somes states beginning in 1912. In 1914 President Woodrow Wilson declared the first national Mother's Day. Nine years after the first official Mother's Day holiday, commercialization of the U.S. holiday became so rampant that Anna Jarvis herself became a major opponent of what the holiday had become. Mother's Day continues to this day to be one of the most commercially successful U.S. holidays.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/mothers_day

"Mother's Day was established in the United States toward the beginning of the 20th century. But before then, England had a Christian tradition known as 'Mothering Sunday'.

This took place on the fourth Sunday of Lent. Knowing that catechumens were preparing for entry into the Church at Easter. Christians remembered and gave thanks for their own Baptism, and visited their 'Mother Church'. (the church where they were baptized.)

This eventually led to the custom of people honoring their own mothers on that day.

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Before the revision of the lectionary, in the old missal the epistle assigned to that Mass described the heavenly Jerusalem as "our mother".