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A Cultural History of Mother’s Day
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Each spring, the world pauses to celebrate an idea both ancient and intimate: motherhood. Shops brim with blossoms, breakfast trays are carried upstairs, and handmade cards find their way onto kitchen tables. Yet behind this tender annual ritual lies a remarkably layered story — one that spans millennia and moves from the temples of ancient Anatolia to the parlours of Victorian England, from early Christian feasts to twentieth-century reform movements.
Mother’s Day, as we know it, is not the invention of florists or greeting card companies (though both have certainly embraced it). Its roots run far deeper, entwined with humanity’s oldest acts of reverence: the worship of fertility, the veneration of divine mothers, and the social recognition of nurture itself.
The Ancient Origins: Goddesses of the Earth
Long before the word “mother” implied the domestic and emotional, it was cosmic. Across the ancient world, maternal figures embodied the very principle of creation. In Phrygia (modern-day Turkey), the great goddess Cybele — or Magna Mater, the Great Mother — was worshipped with processions, music, and ecstatic rituals celebrating life’s renewal each spring. Her image, often carved from stone or cast in bronze, shows her enthroned, flanked by lions: majestic, protective, and fecund.
In ancient Greece, Cybele’s rites merged with those of Rhea, mother of the Olympian gods, and in Rome she became Mater Deum, mother of the gods. Her festival, the Hilaria, held around the March equinox, was a time of joy and thanksgiving, echoing through centuries of seasonal renewal.
In the Egyptian world, Isis played a similar role — the archetype of the devoted mother, mourning and resurrecting her husband Osiris, nurturing their son Horus. Artists across dynasties represented Isis nursing the infant god: an image so enduring that it later influenced early Christian depictions of the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child.
Such figures — Cybele, Rhea, Isis, Demeter — form the mythological bedrock of maternal symbolism: creative, protective, cyclical. They were less about individual sentiment than about cosmic order. To celebrate the mother was to honour the rhythm of life itself.
Christian Transformations: From the Sacred to the Familial
As Christianity spread through Europe, pagan festivals dedicated to mother goddesses were reinterpreted. By the Middle Ages, the Church had developed its own maternal observances, most notably Mothering Sunday — a term that predated the modern secular holiday by centuries.
Originally, Mothering Sunday was not about individual mothers but about the “Mother Church.” On the fourth Sunday in Lent, the faithful were encouraged to return to their “mother church” — the main cathedral or the church of their baptism — to give thanks. Over time, however, the journey home took on a more personal significance.
By the 16th and 17th centuries, it became a day when apprentices and servants, often living away from home, were allowed to return to visit their families. They would bring small gifts — flowers from the hedgerows, a fruit cake, or simnel cake, layered with marzipan and spices. Gradually, the emphasis shifted from ecclesiastical duty to filial affection.
In portraits and prints of the period, the domestic sphere began to acquire a quiet sanctity. Artists such as Jan Vermeer, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, and later Thomas Gainsborough captured scenes of mothers and children with luminous tenderness. The spiritual and the domestic were no longer separate domains; the mother’s love became a kind of daily holiness.
The 19th Century: The Sentimental Revolution
By the Victorian era, motherhood had become the moral centre of the home — a symbol of purity, virtue, and self-sacrifice. The “angel in the house,” as the poet Coventry Patmore famously described her, embodied ideals of gentleness and devotion.
Industrialisation had drawn many women and men away from rural life, and family bonds were often strained by distance and labour. In this new urban landscape, the image of the mother became both nostalgic and moralising — a stabilising force in a changing world.
Mothering Sunday persisted in Britain, but its observance waned by the late nineteenth century. Across the Atlantic, however, a different kind of movement was emerging — one driven not by religion or ritual, but by reform and remembrance.
The American Invention: Anna Jarvis and the Birth of Mother’s Day
The modern Mother’s Day owes its existence largely to one woman: Anna Jarvis of West Virginia. In the early 20th century, Jarvis sought to honour her own mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, who had devoted her life to improving public health and supporting mothers during and after the American Civil War.
Ann Reeves Jarvis had organised “Mother’s Work Clubs”, grassroots groups that provided medicine, promoted sanitation, and cared for wounded soldiers. After her death in 1905, Anna Jarvis campaigned for a national day to commemorate all mothers — a day of personal reflection and gratitude rather than public spectacle.
In 1908, the first official Mother’s Day service was held at Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church in Grafton, West Virginia. White carnations, Ann Jarvis’s favourite flower, were distributed to attendees. Within a few years, the observance spread across the United States. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation establishing Mother’s Day as a national holiday, to be held on the second Sunday in May.
For Anna Jarvis, it was a moral triumph — but also a personal tragedy. As the holiday gained popularity, it became increasingly commercialised. Florists, confectioners, and card companies capitalised on its sentimentality. Jarvis spent much of her later life denouncing what she called the “profiteering” of Mother’s Day, even campaigning legally to rescind it. Ironically, her protest only amplified its fame.
A Global Tradition: Adaptation and Reinvention
Mother’s Day quickly spread beyond the United States, though its form varied. Britain revived its older Mothering Sunday tradition, aligning it once more with the Christian calendar but infusing it with the American spirit of personal celebration. Other countries adapted the date to fit their own histories: Norway in February, France and Sweden in late May, Thailand on the Queen’s birthday, Indonesia in December.
In Latin America, Mother’s Day took on a particularly passionate tone, merging Catholic reverence for the Virgin Mary with familial affection. In Mexico, the feast on 10 May is marked by serenades, feasts, and flowers — an exuberant homage to the maternal heart.
Throughout the twentieth century, artists and designers have explored the visual language of motherhood. The V&A’s collections hold countless examples: 19th-century photographs of mothers and infants, Edwardian postcards adorned with gilt borders and carnations, and later, bold mid-century graphics celebrating the modern matriarch. In each, the mother figure evolves — from sacred icon to sentimental muse to symbol of strength and individuality.
The Modern Muse: Beyond the Domestic
Today, Mother’s Day continues to evolve. It remains, for many, a day of affection and remembrance, yet it also carries a deeper resonance in an era that questions traditional gender roles and definitions of family. The word “mother” itself has broadened, encompassing biological, adoptive, and chosen relationships — anyone who nurtures, guides, or sustains others.
Artists and designers of the 21st century have reclaimed motherhood as a site of creativity and complexity. From Tracey Emin’s embroidered confessions to Lubaina Himid’s painted matriarchs, the maternal form has re-entered the gallery not as sentiment, but as power — both intimate and political.
The commercial trappings of the holiday persist — the cards, the bouquets, the brunch menus — yet beneath them lies an enduring impulse: to acknowledge care as an art, and love as a lineage.
The Heart of the Matter
Across centuries, the celebration of motherhood has mirrored humanity’s changing self-image. From goddess to saint, from homemaker to activist, the mother has been the vessel through which societies imagine continuity, compassion, and creation itself.
In the end, Mother’s Day is less a fixed date than a mirror held up to culture — reflecting not only how we see mothers, but how we value care, connection, and the quiet heroism of everyday love. Like all rituals that survive across millennia, it endures because it answers a fundamental human need: to give thanks, to remember, and to belong.