Mothers' and Fathers' Day of Honour
Mothers' Day of Honour
The idea to honour mothers all over the world on a special day
came up in England in the middle of the 19th century.This idea,
however, was not completely new, as the following report dated
1644 was found:
Every Mid-Lent Sunday is a great day at Worcester, when all the children and grandchildren meet with the head of the family to have a feast. They call it Mothering Sunday.
The Sunday in question, Laetare (Mid-Lent Sunday), was a cheerful day within the forty days of Lent (Quadragesima). It was used by children living further away to visit their parents (go a-mothering) and to give their mother presents (simnel cake or mothering cake).
In Thuringia, Laetare or Mid-Lent Sunday was a general day for making visits and of generous hospitality towards relatives. Similar traditions are known to exist in the Champagne area and among Walloons.
In 1872, the then influential writer Julia W. Howe suggested that an official holiday was due to American mothers, but Mother's Day was not introduced in the U.S.A. until a quarter of a century later.
Anna Jarvis of Philadelphia took up the idea and started an advertising campaign for an official Mother's Day on 9th May, 1907, the second anniversary of her mother's death. President Woodrow Wilson complied with this request on 8th May, 1914 fixing the respective second Sunday in May. In addition to the customs of wearing a colourful carnation in honour of the living mothers or a white one in remembrance of those who had deceased, sending or handing over Mother's Day cards has also become more and more popular since then. Today, there are not only cards with texts intended for blood-related mothers but also for "stepmothers" or women who cared "like a mother".
The custom was also generally adopted on the European continent
after the First World War; first in Austria and Scandinavia.
It began in Germany in 1922/23. In 1933 the second Sunday in
May was fixed. In countries with Communist governments, Mother's
Day was celebrated on the International Women's Day on 8th March.
Fathers' Day of Honour
The American Louisa Dodd, whose father fought in the War of Secession
(1861-65), founded a movement to honour the fathers in 1910.
These activities became so successful that, in 1924, President
Calvin Coolidge issued a recommendation to the individual States
of the U.S.A. to introduce a special holiday. Father's Day was
highly accepted by wide social strata among the American population
so that President Nixon finally raised the day to the status
of a public holiday in 1974 choosing the second Sunday in June.
More than 95 million Father's Day cards were sold in the U.S.A.
in 1997.
In Germany, Father's Day is celebrated on Ascension Day. The fact that it has not been ranked as high as it should be as a day in honour of responsible and caring fathers is rather incomprehensible. Fathers too as well as mothers like to receive small presents, cards or letters as a token of gratitude.
This might be the reason why one can see so many groups of men, perhaps consisting of lonely fathers who are joined by non-fathers more and more often, hiking, biking or travalling by horse drawn carriages during this day.
Günter Garbrecht
Greeting Card Association of Germany
April1999
The Valentine Card's
The historical background
Mother's Day
and Father's Day of Honour