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Winter: Call for world peace echoes on Mother's Day

Published May 13, 2006 at midnight

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Mother's Day is sometimes traced to ancient Greeks, who celebrated mother goddess Rhea with spring festivals. In 1600s England, on the fourth Sunday of Lent, servants were reportedly given the day off to visit their mothers.

In our own country, Mother's Day had a little different origin: The day was first proposed not as a festival but as a call for world peace.

In 1870, Julia Ward Howe launched Mother's Day for Peace with the following Mother's Day Proclamation:

Arise then . . . women of this day!

Arise, all women who have hearts!

Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:

"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,

Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,

For caresses and applause.

Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn

All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.

We, the women of one country,

Will be too tender of those of another country

To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

Howe, an abolitionist and a religious, highly educated woman, is best known for writing the lyrics to the popular Civil War anthem, The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

As part of her volunteer work with the Sanitary Commission, forerunner of the U.S Red Cross, Howe had visited a Union camp in Virginia in 1862, where the soldiers were singing John Brown's Body. According to some accounts, one of Howe's companions suggested the song's message could be a bit more uplifting, so Howe, in one night, penned the famous lines that begin: "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."

They were first published as a poem in Atlantic Monthly, which paid Howe $5.

Eight years later, Howe had become an outspoken peace activist. She proposed a Mother's Day for Peace, but the movement never took off.

In 1907, Anna Jarvis, the daughter of one of Howe's contemporaries, picked up where Howe had left off. Jarvis began a massive nationwide campaign to honor her own mother, who worked for reconciliation after the Civil War. In 1914, President Wilson officially made the second Sunday of every May Mother's Day.

Unfortunately, the story doesn't have a happy ending.

The holiday quickly turned into something too commercial for Jarvis, according to several accounts, including this one at "She filed a lawsuit to stop a 1923 Mother's Day festival and was even arrested for disturbing the peace at a war mothers' convention where women were selling white carnations to raise money . . . Jarvis told a reporter shortly before her death in 1948, at age 84, that she was sorry she had ever started 'Mother's Day.' "

But Jarvis and Howe are not forgotten.

In Denver today, the Colorado Women's Agenda will honor the two of them with an "upbeat" Mothers of Peace Brunch from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Iliff School of Theology, 2201 S. University Blvd., Denver (tickets $37.50 at the door).

The keynote speaker is Dani Newsum, history and law instructor and popular local media gadfly. Four local women will be recognized for their work to improve women's lives.

I can't be there, but I'm glad to see there's a group trying to remind us of the holiday's roots, and of Howe herself - a complicated, severe-looking woman who spoke three languages, gave birth to six children and complained frequently about her overly controlling husband.

But read some of the words she wrote 130 years ago and you can't help but think a) there is nothing new under the sun and b) here's a woman who had the guts to stand up and say, "Moms, don't let your babies grow up to be soldiers."

Never a politically safe or especially popular position.

As the parent of a draft-age son, I see my control over him rapidly diminish. Young adults will do what they will do, and that includes waging war.

My best hope is that I have taught him to follow his conscience.

This Mother's Day, my heart is with the brave women whose brave children are fighting in Iraq, and my head is with Julia Ward Howe.