Mother's Day Proclamation, The Real Meaning of Mother's Day

Most people credit Anna Jarvis with founding the American Mother's Day holiday as we know it in 1912.  However, long before Anna Jarvis, in 1870 Julia Ward Howe became the first to proclaim a Mother's Day for Peace when she wrote the Mother's Day Proclamation as a pacifist reaction to the carnage of the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War.  

Julia Ward Howe was "a prominent American abolitionist, social activist, and poet, most famous as the author of 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic'."  She, like many women of her time, felt a responsibility to women's activism and to advocate for a more civil society.  

The women who founded Mother's Day did not envision the holiday to be celebrated as it is now, with printed greeting cards, chocolate, and brunch at restaurants.  They envisioned women in the streets demonstrating for the type of society they wanted.

So, to remember our roots, here is the Mother's Day Proclamation:

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts,
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.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at someplace 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.

I first read the Mother's Day Proclamation when I received it in an email inviting me to a Mother's Day protest when I was active with CODEPINK Women for Peace in the San Francisco Bay Area.  As the leader of a local Peace and Justice organization this proclamation really resonated with me.  Now, as a member of a military family and a mother, it resonates even more.  I read this proclamation every Mother's Day.  

As a mother, member of a military family and community in a country a decade into war (ok, 3 wars) I think it's more important than ever for us to read and remember the Mother's Day Proclamation, renew our commitment to peace and justice, and fight so that no other mother loses her son, daughter or husband to the violence of war.

Happy Mother's Day!