Mother’s Day is Special Globally
The Mother’s Day holiday is quite familiar to many people, maybe most people, as a day of celebrating love and appreciation for moms everywhere. More and more commonly this also means honoring the people in our lives that have been like mothers to us as well. Mother’s Day is celebrated at different times from culture to culture for a number of reasons; here is an overview of some of those dates and their history.
Present-day celebrations in the U.S. and many other countries are directly traced back to the 1870s when an essay by Julia Ward Howe was published, and later when Anna Jarvis promoted setting an official holiday in the early 1900s. However, the roots of the modern Mother’s Day may lie in the society of the ancient Greeks. They held a festival honoring mother goddesses, and human mothers by extension, every year around the vernal equinox. This practice was continued later by the Romans.
In the United Kingdom, the date on which Mother’s Day is celebrated each year is related to the timing of Lent, whereas Canada and the United States always celebrate on the second Sunday of May. The second Sunday of May is, in fact, the choice of 82 different countries on six continents. Overall, May is by far the most popular month in which to set Mother’s Day, with 104 countries choosing to celebrate sometime during the fifth month.
Other nations, like Bulgaria and Ukraine, celebrate it on March 8th in conjunction with International Women’s Day. Still others including Egypt observe Mother’s Day on March 21, the vernal equinox where winter turns to spring; this is perhaps a throwback to the original celebrations so many centuries ago.
Mother’s Days in many countries are big gift-giving occasions, and there can be a lot of pressure to come up with the absolute perfect gift. Jewelry is always a safe bet, and there are many options of special mother’s rings and other mother’s jewelry available, which is customized with the birthstone of each child.
