Happy Australian Mother's Day

Today is Mother’s Day in Australia. We get to celebrate this day twice a year, because it’s held on different days in Australia and the UK.

Mother’s Day in the United States was the creation of Anna Jarvis. She advocated for a day to celebrate mothers, who, she said, were the people who have done more for you than anyone in the world. In 1907 she held a memorial for her own mother, Ann Jarvis, an activist for peace and women’s issues, who had died on the second Sunday in May 1905. The idea took off and in 1914 President Woodrow Wilson declared the second Sunday in May a national holiday in celebration of mothers. (The extra shows Anna on the right and her mother Ann.)

Anna’s story was a sad one. She was horrified by the commercialisation and exploitation of Mother’s Day and in the end wished she had never started it. She died in an asylum at the age of 84, alone and penniless from the various legal battles she waged over the holiday she started. She had no children.

In England Mothering Sunday has a much longer tradition, connected with the Church’s Easter observances and celebrated on the fourth Sunday in Lent, Laetare Day, a day of rejoicing in the Christian calendar.

In Australia Mother’s Day was first celebrated in 1910, with special church services, and it took the American date, not the English one.

The photo is of J and his mother, eighteen years ago. Happy Australian Mother’s Day to all the mothers we know.