Creative Gifts for San Francisco Moms

Motherhood has been celebrated since ancient times. The ancient Greeks paid homage to Rhea, the Mother of Gods. There are also many stories of ancient Romans worshipping a Goddess known as Cybele, dating from as early as 260 B.C.

In more modern times, "Mothering Sunday" was celebrated on the fourth Sunday of Lent in England in the 1600s. Known to some as "Refreshment Sunday", it was the only day when you were allowed to indulge themselves in whatever they had given up for Lent. The custom was for families to hold large parties centered around a big meal, where mother was treated as an honored guest.

The idea of Mothers Day was originally suggested in the U.S. by Julia Ward (who also wrote the lyrics to the Battle Hymn of the Republic) as a way to celebrate peace. Ward's mother had also tried to establish a similar holiday, "Mothers Friendship Day", to heal the pain of the Civil War. Unfortunately, the idea never really took off. That is, until Anna Jarvis began campaigning for a day to commemorate her own mother, who died in 1905.

The first official Mothers Day in the U.S. took place in 1907, when Julia Ward held a ceremony to honor her mother. Ultimately, her tenacious campaigning paid off, and by 1911, the Mothers Day custom had been adopted by most states. Then, in 1914 President Woodrow Wilson took up the cause and declared Mothers Day as a national holiday, only this time it would be on the SECOND Sunday in May, not the fourth. The idea quickly caught on, spreading to Canada and Mexico, and many more countries throughout the world.

Of course, today's commercialized version of Mothers Day is not at all what Anna Jarvis had in mind when she originally lobbied for the holiday. In fact, she was arrested in 1923 for trying to prevent women from selling flowers. She is quoted as saying, "I wanted it to be a day of sentiment not profit."

Oddly enough, though Jarvis never had children of her own, until her death in 1948, she received hundreds of Mothers Day cards from all over the world each year.

"A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts."

~ Washington Irving
(Author of the short stories "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle". 1783-1859)

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"The mother loves her child most divinely, not when she surrounds him with comfort and anticipates his wants, but when she resolutely holds him to the highest standards and is content with nothing less than his best."

~ Hamilton Wright Mabie
(American writer, 1845-1916)

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"Mother love is the fuel that enables a normal human being to do the impossible."

~ Marion C. Garretty
(from "A Little Spoonful of Chicken Soup for the Mother's Soul")