Don
05-08-2009, 05:55 PM
This story (http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/?p=3045), which takes a look at how Mother's Day came to be, is another object lesson in the evolution of government actions. The Readers' Digest version:
Mother’s Day was the brainchild of Anna Jarvis, a Philadelphia woman stricken with grief over the death of her saintly mother in May 1905.
In May 1908, freshman Senator Elmer Burkett (R-NE) put Miss Jarvis’s proposal before his colleagues. It was not a Hallmark moment.
Burkett’s mawkish if well-meant discourse was met by a hail of mockery.
Senator John Kean (R-NJ) immediately moved to amend Burkett’s measure by striking everything after “Resolved” and substituting the Fifth Commandment: “Honor thy father and thy mother.”
It is not a proper subject for legislation,” declared Senator Weldon Heyburn (R-ID). “[T]he sentiment that exists between the parent and the child” was “too sacred to be made the subject of bandying words” and symbolic resolutions.
By a margin of 33-14, the Senate contemptuously returned this first Mother’s Day resolution to committee. But a few constitutionalist pettifoggers were not going to stop Anna Jarvis. She enlisted the potent support of the World’s Sunday School Association. By 1914, members of Congress were falling all over each other in praise of a federally sanctioned day of maternal homage. Mother’s Day, celebrated on the second Sunday of May, was here to stay.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the florist. Anna Jarvis, the mother of Mother’s Day, became its harshest critic.
Jarvis denounced the greeting card and gift and candy manufacturers who battened on her day. In vain, she urged sons and daughters to buy buttons instead of flowers for mom; she called greeting cards “a poor excuse for the letter you are too lazy to write.” The embittered Jarvis concluded that “charlatans, bandits, pirates, racketeers, kidnappers and other termites” had corrupted “with their greed one of the finest, noblest, truest Movements and celebrations known.”
Once again, unintended consequences raised their ugly head.
So what's your take on Mother's Day, and national holidays in general? Something FedGov should be spending their time and our money on, or not?
Mother’s Day was the brainchild of Anna Jarvis, a Philadelphia woman stricken with grief over the death of her saintly mother in May 1905.
In May 1908, freshman Senator Elmer Burkett (R-NE) put Miss Jarvis’s proposal before his colleagues. It was not a Hallmark moment.
Burkett’s mawkish if well-meant discourse was met by a hail of mockery.
Senator John Kean (R-NJ) immediately moved to amend Burkett’s measure by striking everything after “Resolved” and substituting the Fifth Commandment: “Honor thy father and thy mother.”
It is not a proper subject for legislation,” declared Senator Weldon Heyburn (R-ID). “[T]he sentiment that exists between the parent and the child” was “too sacred to be made the subject of bandying words” and symbolic resolutions.
By a margin of 33-14, the Senate contemptuously returned this first Mother’s Day resolution to committee. But a few constitutionalist pettifoggers were not going to stop Anna Jarvis. She enlisted the potent support of the World’s Sunday School Association. By 1914, members of Congress were falling all over each other in praise of a federally sanctioned day of maternal homage. Mother’s Day, celebrated on the second Sunday of May, was here to stay.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the florist. Anna Jarvis, the mother of Mother’s Day, became its harshest critic.
Jarvis denounced the greeting card and gift and candy manufacturers who battened on her day. In vain, she urged sons and daughters to buy buttons instead of flowers for mom; she called greeting cards “a poor excuse for the letter you are too lazy to write.” The embittered Jarvis concluded that “charlatans, bandits, pirates, racketeers, kidnappers and other termites” had corrupted “with their greed one of the finest, noblest, truest Movements and celebrations known.”
Once again, unintended consequences raised their ugly head.
So what's your take on Mother's Day, and national holidays in general? Something FedGov should be spending their time and our money on, or not?