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CODEPINK is a women-led grassroots organization working to end U.S. wars and militarism, support peace and human rights initiatives, and redirect our tax dollars into healthcare, education, green jobs and other life-affirming programs.

dianemchase@gmail.com Another Mother’s Day has passed, and I feel the weight of expectation lifted off my shoulders. I’ve written about the evolution of Mother’s Day for over 10 years. So this may be a repeat for some of you. I always felt a few holidays were put on the calendar to sell greeting cards or perhaps boost a lull in candy sales after Easter. Though I have a mother and am a mother, Mother’s Day has landed in that category. I want my children to learn to give me gratitude because I deserve it, not because the calendar dictates it. If people deserve to be celebrated, it shou...

In the following decades, numerous Mother’s Day efforts sprang up. One was in 1904, by the administrator of the University of Notre Dame, Frank Hering, After observing students sending penny postcards to their mothers, he proposed “setting aside one day in the year as a nationwide memorial to the memories of mothers and motherhood,” writing: “Throughout history the great men of the world have given their credit for their achievements to their mothers. The Holy Church recognizes this, as does Notre Dame.” The person who successfully made Mother’s Day into a nation...

When the nineteenth century was winding down, and she had become an old lady, Julia Ward Howe had her palm read by “an expert.” The reader traced the wrinkled lines and exclaimed, “You inherit military blood; your hand shows it!” Possibly it did. Howe had martial forebears on both sides of her family. One was South Carolina’s Revolutionary War hero Francis Marion, the celebrated “Swamp Fox” who had bedeviled the British while hiding with his brave band of patriots in Low Country marshes. Yet the lady with the pugnacious palm hated war. She had tried to organ...

In 1914 President Woodrow Wilson declared the second Sunday in the month of May to be Mother’s Day. In a proclamation he wrote, “It is a chance to publicly express love and reverence for the mothers of our country.” In that one stroke of a pen Mother’s Day became a National Holiday in the United States. Truly, I have to hand it to President Wilson. I mean, he had a lot of other things going on in this country. He was dealing with maintaining the neutrality between the Allies and Central Power after the outbreak of World War I. The suffragettes were marching down his heels ...