Mother's Day : A Historical Perspective

Dear Readers--

Firstly, this Journal would like to wish all Mothers, a Happy Mother's Day.

When Mother's Day was first proposed, let us simply say, it didn't quite meet with unanimous, enthusiastic support according to Bill Kauffman at Front Porch Republic:

In May 1908, freshman Senator Elmer Burkett (R-NE) put Miss Jarvis’s proposal before his colleagues. It was not a Hallmark moment.

Senator Burkett explained that Mother’s Day legislation was a special request of the Young Men’s Christian Association. The YMCA, he asserted, was doing the Lord’s work in the “gathering together of the boys for social intercourse”—a theme later elaborated upon by the Village People.

Mother’s Day, said Senator Burkett, would remind “boys from the country who are in the cities and among strangers” to think of “the old homes they left behind and the mothers who gave them birth.”

Burkett’s mawkish if well-meant discourse was met by a hail of mockery. The neophyte legislator was astonished by the ridicule heaped upon his innocent proposal. “I did not expect that a single objection would be offered,” he averred; he was offended to hear “light made of it” by the graybeards.

Senator John Kean (R-NJ) immediately moved to amend Burkett’s measure by striking everything after “Resolved” and substituting the Fifth Commandment: “Honor thy father and thy mother.”

Senator Henry Moore Teller (D-CO) scorned the resolution as “puerile,” “absolutely absurd,” and “trifling.” He announced, “Every day with me is a mother’s day.”

Senator Jacob Gallinger (R-NH) judged the very idea of Mother’s Day to be an insult, as though his memory of his late mother “could only be kept green by some outward demonstration on Sunday, May 10.”

“There are some thoughts that are so great and so sacred that they are belittled by movements of this character,” lectured Senator Charles Fulton (R-OR), who went on to suggest the consecration of “Mother-in-Law Day.”

Besides—and this objection may strike modern ears as bizarre—whether or not young men honored their mothers was none of the federal government’s damned business.

“It is not a proper subject for legislation,” declared Senator Weldon Heyburn (R-ID). “[T]he sentiment that exists between the parent and the child” was “too sacred to be made the subject of bandying words” and symbolic resolutions.

Yours sincerely,
Mild Colonial Boy, Esq.