Mother’s Day has the most phone calls
Mother’s Day has the most meals eaten out
Mother’s Day has the most plants/flowers
Mother’s Day has the most cards (not Christmas cards)
Mother’s Day has the most collect phone calls (oops – that’s Father’s Day)
Mothering Sunday, commonly called “Mothers’ Day” in the United Kingdom, has
no direct connection to the American practice. It falls on the fourth Sunday
of Lent (exactly three weeks before Easter Sunday). It is believed to have
originated from the 16th Century Christian practice of visiting one’s mother
church annually, which meant that most mothers would be reunited with their
children on this day. Most historians believe that young apprentices and
young women in servitude were released by their masters that weekend in
order to visit their families. For some it was the only “time off” all
year.
Copied in the USA after the Civil War as a “Mothers for Peace” movement by
Anna Reeve Jarvis a young West Virginia 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.
When Jarvis died, her daughter, named Anna Jarvis, started the crusade to
found a memorial day for women. The first such Mother’s Day was celebrated
in Grafton, West Virginia, on May 10, 1908. The holiday was declared
officially by some states beginning in 1912. In 1914 President Woodrow
Wilson declared the first national Mother’s Day, as a day for American
citizens to show the flag in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in
war.
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.
Humor –
My wife said, “I’d like to be the ideal mother, but I’m too busy raising my
kids.”
The mother of three notoriously unruly youngsters was asked whether or not
she’d have children if she had it to do over again. “Yes,” she replied. “But
not the same ones.
A little boy forgot his lines in a Sunday school presentation. His mother
was in the front row to prompt him. She gestured and formed the words
silently with her lips, but it did not help. Her son’s memory was blank.
Finally, she leaned forward and whispered the cue, “I am the light of the
world.” The child beamed and with great feeling and a loud clear voice said,
“My mother is the light of the world.”
A teacher gave her class of second graders a lesson on the magnet and what
it does. The next day in a written test, she included this question: “My
full name has six letters. The first one is M. I pick up things. What am I?”
When the test papers were turned in, the teacher was astonished to find over
50% of the students answered the question with the word Mother
~~
Dr Bob Griffin
[email protected] www.grif.net
“Jesus Knows Me, This I Love!”