Mothers’ Day
The Mothers’ Day tradition began in the 1600s when servants returned home on the fourth Sunday in Lent, taking back a loaf of Mothering Bread. Then, after a few hundred years of bread, in the late 19th century, Anna Jarvis of Philadelphia added white carnations to the mix as she campaigned to establish a mothers’ day holiday.
American president Woodrow Wilson made the holiday official in 1914, but Jarvis lived to regret the achievement. Outraged by the commercialisation of Mothers’ Day, she tried to stop the 1923 celebrations, and was even arrested for disturbing the peace at a war mothers’ convention where women sold white carnations to raise money. “This is not what I intended,” Jarvis, never a mother herself, said. “I wanted it to be a day of sentiment, not profit!”
We’re going to have dinner at my sister Melody’s place. She’s cooking the main and our younger sisters, Katie and Hayley, are doing salad, dessert and pre-dinner nibbles. I’m organising drinks, including a nice dessert wine. (And Dad told us to make a restaurant booking because he thought that us kids were too lazy to organise anything!)
Later: I wonder when Mothers’ Day made it across the seas. My siblings fumbled their commercialisation rolls, bringing twelfty precious things.