Today is Mothers Day a special day to remember that to say Thank You is a great way to say I love you.

Motherhood I by Willa Frayser www.willafrayserstudio.com

Mother’s Day Word Origins
adapted from http://dictionary.reference.com/

The second Sunday in May is set aside to celebrate mothers. There is also a Mother’s Day celebration in the United Kingdom, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Turkey, Australia, Mexico, Canada, China, Japan, and Belgium. England’s “Mothering Sunday,” similar to Mother’s Day, is also called Mid-Lent Sunday and it is observed on the fourth Sunday in Lent, though it has largely been replaced by Mother’s Day on the second Sunday in May. Anna Jarvis, born in Grafton, West Virginia in 1864, started the movement to have a Mother’s Day. She wrote letters to politicians, newspaper editors, and church leaders and organized a committee called Mother’s Day International Association to promote the new holiday. She wanted Mother’s Day to be close to Memorial Day so people would recognize mothers for the sacrifices they made for their families in the same way that service people had for their country. The first official Mother’s Day observance was in May 1907. President Woodrow Wilson gave the day national recognition in 1914. Jarvis spent the last years of her life trying to abolish the holiday she had brought into being, because she protested its commercialization.

Mother is one of the surviving words from Anglo-Saxon (starting as modor), which are among the most fundamental words in English. Mother has many cognates in other languages, including Old High German muoter, Dutch moeder, Old Norsemothir, Latin mater, Greek meter, and Sanskrit mat. These words share an Indo-European root. Mother is one of the Anglo-Saxon nouns that has an Anglo-Saxon adjective as well as a Latinate adjective — motherly and maternal — and motherly also came from Old English (modorlic). Mom, a shortened form of momma, was recorded in 1894; momma was first used in 1884. Both are chiefly North American uses. Mamma and mama, created by children reduplicating an instinctive sound, are much earlier terms showing up in the 1500s. In between came mommy (also North American in usage) in 1848, which was a variant of mammy (also 1500s).

Motherhood II by Willa Frayser  www.willfrayserstudio.com

The carnation is the floral symbol of Mother’s Day and the holiday is associated with the colours red and white. Some people wear white carnations on this day to honour mothers who have died and red or pink for those who are living. The “founder” of Mother’s Day, Anna Jarvis, urged people to wear carnations because carnations had been her own Mother’s favourite flower. Carnation is the general name for the cultivated variety of the clove-pink. It is likely that the word derived from coronation, as the flower’s dented leaves somewhat resemble a crown.

The history of greeting cards goes back hundreds of years. Early greeting cards were hand-delivered and handmade. Their popularity forced the introduction of the first postage stamp in 1840. The oldest known greeting card in existence is one for Valentine’s Day, made in the 1400s and now displayed in the British Museum. The most popular card-sending holidays in order are Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Easter, and Father’s Day. Together, the Greeting Card Associations says these five card-sending holidays account for 96% of individual seasonal card sales.