MOTHER'S DAY

Mother's Day is a very heartfelt secular celebration, since it honors what is almost for everyone one of the most important people in life. It is one of the so-called "movable feasts", ie that change date from year to year, the fixed point regarding the date is only one: Mother's Day always falls on a Sunday. The fixed date is the second Sunday of May, a date valid only for Italy.



1908 saw the first celebration, until it was made official in 1914 in the United States by President Woodrow Wilson, by resolution of Congress. A symbolic flower was also associated with the celebration of the feast: the red carnation for living mothers and the white carnation for those who were no longer there. In Italy we have to wait until 1956 for the first celebrations and 1958 for Raul Zaccariche to institutionalize it. In our country something special also took place: Don Otello Migliosi, in Assisi, also began the celebration of a religious nature which exalted the role linked to religion rather than the biological side.
In most countries, the feast has kept the tradition of the second Sunday in May, but others have altered the tradition: in France the mother and family are celebrated on the last Sunday of May, while in Norway Mother's Day is celebrated in February and in Argentina the last Sunday of October is celebrated.

As with most anniversaries, over time this party has increasingly become a commercial engagement. Currently, given the growing presence of homogenitorial families, also called rainbow families, there is an increasing need for a party that celebrates the whole family and not the singularity of a parental role.
We owe modern Mother's Day to Julia Ward Howe who, in 1870, began her battle for the establishment of Mother's Day which, in principle, was also meant to be a moment of reflection against the war. Forty years later, Anna Jarvis again proposed this holiday in honor of her mother, who was a teacher with a deep pacifist spirit.