Julia Ward Howe: The Original Mother's Day Proclamation

I have long held this proclamation and the origins of Mother's Day with the deepest respect and gratitude. May we all embrace the personal and the larger historical meaning of Mother's Day.

I also appreciate the words of Cat Zavis: "Every Mother's Day I like to remember that Mother's Day was not started as a hallmark card and celebration of our mothers (the latter of which is nice but let's be real, wouldn't you rather live in a country that ACTUALLY loved mothers and showed that love through equal pay, paid maternity leave, quality free childcare, and so much more?), but rather a political statement demanding an end to war where mothers' sons kill other mothers' sons."

So many days designated as holidays in the United States have become commercialized and distanced from their deeper meanings and the potential they hold — very much including Mother's Day — for remembrance of what we have forgotten and inspiration for deepening and evolving change, meaning, activism, generosity, love, and the commitment to do our part in the great universal struggle for a more just, peaceful, and loving world. — Molly 

While countries around the world celebrate their own Mother’s Day at different times throughout the year, several countries, including the United States, Italy, Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, and Turkey celebrate it on the second Sunday of May.

Arise, all women who have hearts!

In the United States, the origins of the official holiday go back to 1870, when Julia Ward Howe – an abolitionist best remembered as the poet who wrote “Battle Hymn of the Republic” – worked to establish a Mother’s Peace Day. Howe dedicated the celebration to the eradication of war, and organized festivities in Boston for years.

In 1907, Anna Jarvis, of Philadelphia, began the campaign to have Mother’s Day officially recognized, and in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson did this, proclaiming it a national holiday and a “public expression of our love and reverence for all mothers.”

Today’s commercialized celebration of candy, flowers, gift certificates, and lavish meals at restaurants bears little resemblance to Howe’s original idea. There is nothing wrong with that. But here, for the record’s sake, is the proclamation she wrote in 1870, which explains, in her own impassioned words, the goals of the original holiday.

Mother's Day Proclamation

Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of tears! Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.

“Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says, “Disarm, disarm! The sword is not the balance of justice.” Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each learning after his own time, the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.

— Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910

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https://www.plough.com/en/topics/culture/holidays/mothers-day/the-original-mother-s-day-proclamation