Forget about candy and flowers. If you want to celebrate the true spirit of Mother's Day, you'd be better off marching in a rally or writing a letter to your congressman.
Certainly there's nothing wrong with cherished traditions such as going out to a chi-chi champagne brunch or giving your mother a strand of pearls. However, in honor of Mom's big day, we thought it was high time to revisit just why the holiday began in the first place. It's one of the forgotten chapters of women's history that Mother's Day got its start as an antiwar protest. It was supposed to be all about peace, not pampering.
For the record, the notion of celebrating motherhood may be as old as civilization itself. The ancient Egyptians had a special day of worship for the goddess Isis, the mother of the pharaohs. But the concept behind Mother's Day in America has very specific origins, forged in the chaos and crises of a nation reeling from war.
Famous for writing the patriotic anthem "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," Julia Ward Howe later became aghast at the carnage of the Civil War. She wanted women to join forces to stop their sons from ever going off to die again. In 1870, she issued what she called her Mother's Day Proclamation.
"Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice," she wrote. "Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience."
It wasn't so much a celebration as a clarion call -- a battle hymn for a better republic, if you will.
"Women in the 19th century took their role as moral guardians seriously," says Estelle Freedman, professor of U.S. history at Stanford University. "They thought of themselves not just as mothers in the home but as mothers of humanity, mothers of civilization. They were very active in social reform, and the need to vote, the suffrage movement, sprang out of that activism."
Somehow over the years, the origins of the day got overshadowed. In fact, one of the early champions of Mother's Day, Anna Jarvis, spent every last penny of her fortune to stop what she perceived as the crass commercialization of the occasion. Jarvis had taken up the crusade out of love for her own mother, who had worked, under the auspices of a "Mother's Friendship Day," to reunite families divided during the Civil War.
It was Jarvis who came up with the carnation as the official flower for Mom, and she who fought to get the day recognized as a national holiday; it was in 1914. But by the '20s, she was appalled that the holiday had been hijacked by purveyors of cheap sentimentality. She died in 1948, embittered and penniless, and was buried next to her mother in a Pennsylvania cemetery.
"It's deteriorated into a token sentimental gesture, a day where women get taken out to eat. But that's not at all what Ward Howe intended," says Freedman, who specializes in women's history. "It was supposed to be a mix of honoring women in the domestic sphere and honoring women in the world."
While we often think of Mom as the ultimate icon of home and hearth, not a rabble-rouser taking to the streets, some say we have overlooked the fact that a mother's love for her family naturally extends beyond the scope of her minivan. That's because the destiny of her children is inextricably entwined with the state of the world, from foreign policy to environmental issues.
"We've forgotten that political issues matter deeply to mothers, and we've silenced and marginalized their voices," says Lisa Harper, author of "A Double Life: Discovering Motherhood." "Instead of being the day when mothers speak up and are listened to in the public sphere, Mother's Day has become one when we stay in bed or are whisked off to private celebrations. Mothers have lost their day as a time to come together, with a public voice and a powerful political agenda. Maybe it's time we brought this platform back."
To be sure, many activists still revere Ward Howe's call to arms. Code Pink cites her poem on its website. Filmmaker Robert Greenwald drew attention to the roots of the day in his short film "Mother's Day for Peace," in which celebs such as Vanessa Williams, Felicity Huffman and Gloria Steinem do a dramatic reading of the proclamation. But for most Americans, the occasion has lost its teeth entirely.
So why is this milestone in women's history so little known? Why do we all remember to buy a present (or at least a card, if we're pressed for time), but no one remembers the point of it all?
"It's about who tells the story. That's who shapes our notions of history. Women do not tell the stories," says Katie Orenstein, founder of New York's OpEd Project. "Whoever controls the story controls the central conversations of our age. That's who narrates the world. That's who assigns meaning to the events in our lives. That's who has a voice."
Certainly the conversation about what Mother's Day stands for also has been steered by businesses eager to sell stuff. According to the National Retail Federation, Mother's Day generates about $14 billion in spending. If instead, mothers simply talked politics over a cup of tea, there would be a whole lot less ka-ching involved.
Jarvis, for one, lambasted the greeting card routine: "A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world."
Mothers today are a little torn about what the holiday means, what it ought to mean and how best to celebrate it. Some say that hardworking moms more than deserve a little appreciation. They think it's all right that insight takes a back seat to indulgence, in this instance.
"Moms today, and probably forever, do so much for everyone in their families all the time, making sacrifices on a daily basis to care for their children in so many ways, that a day to say, 'Thanks, we appreciate you' is a nice thing," says Lisa Mallette, a mother of two, who lives in San Mateo. "I, for one, appreciate a day with feet up, bonbons and flowers."
Others are saddened that the holiday has lost its substance. They fear that mothers have given up a valuable opportunity to have their voices heard.
"I'm all for celebrating mothers and their work, and I love a beautiful bunch of flowers and chocolate any day of the year (also jewelry). But the commercialization of Mother's Day sentimentalizes women's work and reduces mothering to a private, domestic affair," says Harper, a mother of two who lives in Redwood City.
"So, rather than whisking us off to private brunches this year, put our voices on the front page. ... I would love to sleep in. But I might love even more a day to be listened to."
Perhaps there is some way to combine the two impulses. Why not mull over the state of the nation while sipping mimosas? Maybe mothers can be empowered and appreciated at the same time. After all, moms are masters at multi-tasking. If women can check email and breast-feed at the same time, they can do anything.
Certainly as the nation once again finds itself mired in the uncertainty and terror of ongoing wars, and as we contemplate the possibility of putting yet more boots on the ground, Ward Howe's rallying cry reverberates as loudly as ever. And it's not the kind of sentiment you find in a greeting card.
"Why are we not in the streets?" she asked so many decades ago. "Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters to prevent the waste of that human life of which they alone bear and know the cost?"
