Mother's Day U.S.

The bond between mother and child is remembered on Mother's Day.

Mother's Day is celebrated the second Sunday in May to honor mothers throughout America. The holiday was formally declared after Congress passed legislation May 8, 1914, and requesting a proclamation declaring this date a national holiday. President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation on May 9, 1914, declaring the first national holiday. It was requested that American citizens fly the American flag to honor those mothers who lost sons in war action.

Origins

Mother's Day was started by women's peace groups after the Civil War. Women from both sides gathered together to honor the sons they had lost during the war. Several Mother's Day observances were held during the 1870s and 1880s all at the local level. By 1868 Ann Jarvis had created a committee to establish a "Mother's Friendship Day" to reunite families divided by the Civil War. She died in 1905 before seeing the holiday implemented by Wilson. Her daughter, also called Ann Jarvis, took up her mother's cause and with the help of a Philadelphia merchant, John Wanamaker, a Mother's Day service was held at Andrew's Methodist Episcopal Church in Grafton, West Virginia, on May 9, 1907, at the church where her mother had taught Sunday School. The first "official" Mother's Day service was held May 10, 1908, at Andrew's Methodist Episcopal Church, and there was a larger ceremony in the Wanamaker Auditorium in the Wanamaker's store in Philadelphia on the same day.