SunstarTV Bureau: By wishing all the mothers across world, on Sunday, Google Doodle commemorated Mother’s Day with a pop card.
The stop-motion artwork from Olivia When doodlelizes the two ‘O’ alphabets in Google with one bigger than the other. While the yellow and small ‘O’, seemingly the kid ‘O’, pops up the heart with a smile, the bigger and red ‘O’, seemingly the mother ‘O’ receives them with glee and pops up her heart as well. The rest of the letters in the word ‘Google’, written the way a child would write them, hang in the background with a tape.
Mother’s Day as we know it today was first celebrated on the second Sunday of May 1908 in the United States of America (USA). The day was founded by Anna Jarvis in memory of her mother Ann Reeves Jarvis, an activist.
As historians explain, Ann wanted a day to be commemorated to celebrating mothers “for the matchless service she renders to humanity in every field of life. She is entitled to it.”
Ann had started running ‘Mothers’ Day Work Clubs’ to combat high infant and child mortality rates. At the work clubs, the mothers learned about hygiene, sanitation and were also provided medicine for the sick in the families.
One of Anna’s children, Anna Jarvis decided to fulfil her mother’s dream and took it upon her to commemorate Ann by celebrating her passing as Mother’s Day.
However, while Anna’s vision was to recognize the contribution of mothers across the world, Ann’s approach to the day was from the perspective of a daughter celebrating her mother, hence the singular apostrophe.
Why Mother’s Day is celebrated on the second Sunday of May?
Three years after Ann’s death, the first Mother’s Day was celebrated in the Andrews Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia.
Anna chose the second Sunday in May because it would always be close to May 9, the day her mother had died.
Anna handed out hundreds of white carnations, her mother’s favourite flower, to the mothers who attended.
The popularity of the celebration grew. In 1910 Mother’s Day became a West Virginia state holiday and in 1914 it was designated a national holiday by President Woodrow Wilson.
Why Anna wanted Mother’s Day rescinded?
One of the major reasons for the success of Mother’s Day was its commercial appeal. However, Anna was against it. She fought hard to make her point that the original idea behind Mother’s Day had a sentimental value that should not be commercially exploited.
Anna urged people not to buy carnations, the prices of which would sky-rocket on Mother’s Day. In addition to the flower industry, the card and candy industries were major benefactors of Mother’s Day. And that is not how Anna envisioned it.
Even before it became a national holiday, Anna had claimed copyright on the phrase “Second Sunday in May, Mother’s Day”, and threatened to sue anyone who marketed it without permission.
Even in old age, Anna went door-to-door in Philadelphia asking for signatures to back an appeal for Mother’s Day to be rescinded.
(Soueces: Times of India)
