subject: The Real Origins Of Mothers Day [print this page] Today you can't swing a bunch of flowers on Mothers Day without taking out five Hallmark card displays, four speciality chocolate boxes and a stack of luxury Mothers Day smellies. But how did we get here? Searching Google throws up a whole host of alternative theories. But basically it boils down to the following:
Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome
With so many gods knocking about during this period it was just a matter of time before one was celebrated for being a top notch mother figure. And as Mothers go, these two were pretty tough cookies. Rhea was a Greek goddess, married to her brother and mother to six noteworthy children including Zeus, Hades and Demeter, while Roman mother goddess Cybele is connected to all sorts of bizarre rituals in her honour, including sacrificing bulls and ritual castration. Working mums today don't know they're born.
Christianity
Christianity picked up momentum after cracks started showing in the Roman Empire, and a century or two later, Cybele and other pagan beliefs were replaced by Mothering Sunday and the celebration of the Virgin Mary and the 'Mother Church'. Unfortunately, despite teaching love and compassion, the Church was run by power-hungry men whose tactics were as brutal as the Roman resisters. However, they did give everyone (including lowly servants) a day off work a year to return to the Mother Church. Well, no-one's perfect.
Guilt-ridden children
Feeling a constant need to please our mothers long after we're all grown up is one of life's inevitabilities and is a cycle that can only be broken by having kids of your own. Take Anna Jarvis, a loving daughter who never forgot her mother's dying wish that someday someone must honour all mothers, living and dead, and pay tribute to the contributions made by them. She ended up dedicating her whole life to promoting a National US Mothers Day. All credit to her she got there in the end, but you can't help but think, had she had children of her own, life would've been simpler.
War
No really... just look at Bolivia. In the 1930s this nation kicked off their own Mothers Day celebrations by way of thanks after a rather large number of the country's women met their maker during a slaughter in the Bolivian War of Independence. A similar thing happened in the UK, where after plodding along in the same vein for decades, interest in Mothers Day lapsed in the 1930s only to make a bigger come back than Britney Spears after World War II it seems there's nothing quite like a good old-fashioned bloodbath to make you appreciate your mum.
