Mums Are Great and that’s a FACT!

We couldn’t let Mother’s Day pass and not commemorate it in some way, after all Oakridge Care Groups homes are filled with truly wonderful mothers, grandmothers and even great grandmothers. So, we thought as it is a well known FACT that every mother is great that we would put together some other less well known facts about Mother’s Day.... And don’t worry Dad’s, we’ll do the same for you on Father’s Day.

1)     Mother’s Day, despite being a fairly commercial event these days, is not the invention of a card company - it actually dates back nearly 3,000 years to Ancient Greece!

2)     The earliest tributes to mothers date back to the annual spring festival the Greeks dedicated to Rhea, the mother of many deities, and to the offerings ancient Romans made to their Great Mother of Gods, Cybele.

3)     In the UK Christians celebrate the Mother’s Day festival on the fourth Sunday in Lent in honour of Mary, mother of Christ. The holiday was later expanded to include all mothers and is now called Mothering Sunday. 

4)     This year countries in the Balkans, North Eastern Europe and as far afield as Bangladesh and Nigeria will celebrate Mother’s Day in March, but most countries celebrate Mother’s Day in May, including the USA, Australia, Denmark and Singapore. Only Norway celebrates in February.

5)     In the United States, Mother's Day started nearly 150 years ago, when Anna Jarvis, an Appalachian Mountain homemaker, organized a day to raise awareness of poor health conditions in her community, a cause she believed would be best advocated by mothers. She called it "Mother's Work Day." 

6)     Fifteen years later, Julia Ward Howe, a Boston poet, pacifist, suffragist, and author of the lyrics to the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," organized a day encouraging mothers to rally for peace, since she believed they bore the loss of human life more harshly than anyone else. 

7)     In 1905 when Anna Jarvis died, her daughter, also named Anna, began a campaign to memorialize the life work of her mother. Legend has it that young Anna remembered a Sunday school lesson that her mother gave in which she said, "I hope and pray that someone, sometime, will found a memorial mother's day. There are many days for men, but none for mothers." 

8)     At first, people observed Mother's Day by attending church, writing letters to their mothers, and eventually, by sending cards, presents, and flowers. With the increasing gift-giving activity associated with Mother's Day, Anna Jarvis became enraged. She believed that the day's sentiment was being sacrificed at the expense of greed and profit. In 1923 she filed a lawsuit to stop a Mother's Day festival, and was even arrested for disturbing the peace at a convention selling carnations for a war mother's group. Before her death in 1948, Jarvis is said to have confessed that she regretted ever starting the mother's day tradition. 

9)     Despite Jarvis's misgivings, Mother's Day has flourished in the United States. In fact, the second Sunday of May has become the most popular day of the year to dine out, and telephone lines record their highest traffic, as sons and daughters everywhere take advantage of this day to honour and to express appreciation of their mothers.

10)  Britons send on average around 23 million cards every year to the nation’s mothers, about 30%of those are homemade... and we know they’re the best ones!