99 years ago in Grafton, West Virginia, Mother's Day was first celebrated in the United States in the small Methodist church of its founder, Anna Jarvis. The concept of a holiday honoring "Mother's Work" arose primarily as a reaction to the Civil War, and was first proposed by Julia Ward Howe in 1870 in her powerful Mother's Day Proclamation against war:

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have breasts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:
"We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will 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, the 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 of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough 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.

Powerful words indeed, and a far cry from the paean to white hair and cookies that Mother's Day has nowadays become. Like so much in America, what starts as a radical, idealistic call for dramatic social reform quickly succumbs to more mainstream economic and political values. The call for unity among women was radical not only for its opposition to the patriotism of the day, but also for the implication that women deserved political power at all, and were in fact better equipped then men to prevent the worst of human tragedies.

The outlook was not promising when Woodrow Wilson declared Mother's Day a national holiday just before the start of the First World War. An embrace of peace and revulsion over the murderous ways of militarism could not be tolerated at a time of war. The holiday quickly became a day to thank mom with a card and a gift.

By 1923 Mother's Day was so commercialized that Anna Jarvis, disgusted with what it had become, proposed it be completely abolished. In a few short years the day meant to be an empowering call for social progress transformed itself into nothing more than the reactionary worship of women who stay in their place.

How should we celebrate this unusual holiday? Leaving home to assemble for an "earnest day of counsel" is no longer an option for most overworked mothers, so flowers or a call home will have to suffice.

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