Mother’s Day
In ancient Greece, a spring festival was dedicated to the Goddess Gaia (Mother Earth), mother of gods and people. This was the first form of Mother’s celebration.
This celebration was succeeded by the celebration dedicated to Gaia’s daughter, Rhea. Rhea was the wife of Saturn and the Mother of Zeus and all the gods of ancient Greece.
In the Roman Empire, we meet Mother’s Day as a celebration dedicated to the Goddess Kyveli, which took place every March.
Then we reach England in the 15th-16th century. A.D., where “Mothering Sunday” was celebrated, i.e. “Mother’s Sunday”, the 4th Sunday of Lent, and was dedicated to mothers. That day all the servants took a day off from their bosses to visit their homes and spend the day with their mothers.
In the United States of America, at the beginning of the 20th century, teacher Anna Jarvis (Anna Jarvis) from Philadelphia, fought for the establishment of Mother’s Day on the 2nd Sunday of May. She wanted to honor her mother who fought for the reconciliation of South and North Americans after the end of the American Civil War in 1864. Anna Jarvis’s struggles were vindicated in 1914, when Congress designated the official national Mother’s Day celebration.
In Greece, Mother’s Day was celebrated for the first time on February 2, 1929, in order to combine this Feast with the Christian Feast of Ypapantis. Finally, during the 1960s, the festival moved from February 2nd to May 2nd Sunday.
Happy birthday to all the mothers, biological and foster, all over the world.
