Reading Comprehension · Social Studies
Mother’s Day
A reading lesson about Mother’s Day — how it was celebrated in Ancient Greece, who first proposed an American Mother’s Day, and how President Woodrow Wilson made it a national holiday.
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Subject
Reading Comprehension
Grade Level
Grades 4–7
Format
Lesson + Printable PDF
Access
Full Member
The Origins of Mother’s Day
Each year on the second Sunday in May, Mother’s Day is celebrated in the United States. Mother’s Day is a day when we honor our mothers and thank them for everything they have done for us. We may give Mother’s Day gifts to mothers, grandmothers, aunts, or other women who have acted like mothers to us. It has been said that phone companies, florists, and restaurants do their biggest business on Mother’s Day!
Mother’s Day is celebrated all over the world on different days. The American date comes from Ancient Greece, where a festival dedicated to Cybele, the mother of the gods, was held each year around the second week of May.
During the Civil War, a woman named Julia Ward Howe came up with the idea of a day to honor mothers. She was inspired by Ann Jarvis, who began Mother’s Work Days in 1858 to help improve sanitation on both sides of the war. Howe wrote a Mother’s Day Proclamation to unite women against war. She wanted Mother’s Day to stand for peace.
Mother’s Day Becomes a Holiday
It took several decades before the first Mother’s Day would actually be celebrated. That happened in Grafton, West Virginia on May 10, 1908, at the church where Ann Jarvis’s daughter taught Sunday school. Today the International Mother’s Day Shrine can be found in that West Virginia city.
The custom spread to other states in the next few years. Mother’s Day became an official state holiday in some states in 1912, and in 1914 President Woodrow Wilson made the second Sunday of May Mother’s Day throughout the country.
Many other countries also have a day to recognize mothers. Some celebrate in May like the United States; others celebrate at different times of year. In Great Britain, Mothering Sunday falls on the fourth Sunday of Lent, usually in March. The British holiday started in the sixteenth century, when people would visit their mother’s church once a year. While it began as a religious holiday, today Mother’s Day is mostly secular — not connected with religion — in both countries.
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