Today Mothers Day or Mothering Sunday is celebrated all over the world. For florists and card shops the event is one of the highlights of the year, but the roots of Mothers Day are not commercial.

Motherhood has been celebrated since ancient times. The ancient Greeks paid homage to Rhea, the Mother of Gods; and there are records of the ancient Romans worshiping a mother Goddess known as Cybele as early as 260 BC. Festivals took place in the spring which was the most fertile time of the year.

The more modern way of honouring mothers began in England in the 1600s where Mothering Sunday was observed on the fourth Sunday of Lent. This day is also known as Refreshment Sunday, the only day when you are allowed to eat or do whatever you have given up for Lent. Not surprisingly, families came together and took the opportunity to party with a big meal at which mother was treated as the guest of honour. Traditionally, mothers were given posies of flowers and a cake.

The term Mothering Sunday is now falling into disuse and has mostly been replaced by Mothers Day, which is used the world over.

In the USA there were several attempts to introduce a Mothers Day as a way to celebrate peace and heal the scars of war. Julia Ward, who wrote the words to the Battle Hymn of the Republic, suggested the idea in 1872. But the idea didnt really take off until Anna Jarvis campaigned for the establishment of a Mothers Day to commemorate her own mother who died in 1905. Wards mother herself had tried to establish a similar holiday, Mothers Friendship Day, to heal the pain of the Civil War.

The first Mothers Day in the USA was held in 1907 when Julia Ward held a ceremony to honour her mother. She then successfully campaigned for a formal holiday to honour mothers and by 1911 most states had taken up the idea. This was followed in 1914 by a declaration by President Woodrow Wilson that Mothers Day should be celebrated as a national holiday on the second Sunday in May. The idea quickly spread to Canada and Mexico and many more countries throughout the world.

The commercialisation of Mothers Day quickly followed, much to the disgust of Anna Jarvis who was arrested in 1923 at a Mothers Day festival for trying to stop women selling flowers. Jarvis said I wanted it to be a day of sentiment not profit.

Ironically Anna Jarvis campaigned for many years against the commercialisation of Mothers Day, the day she had worked so hard to establish.

Although she had no children of her own, each Mothers Day Anna received hundreds of cards from all over the world. Anna Jarvis died in 1948.