Children honor mothers Sunday

Petra Lessoing
Kaiserslautern American


***image1***The second Sunday in May is the day to honor all mothers. Almost all over the world, Sunday is Mother’s Day.

Most
children pamper their mothers and do nice things such as preparing
breakfast, giving flowers and other gifts, and behaving extremely well.

The
day is almost 100 years old and originates in the States. In 1907,
exactly one year after her mother died, Anne Jarvis from Philadelphia
had the idea to choose a day to thank mothers all over the world for
all their love and unselfish care. The idea became real one year later.
As the first town in the world to do so, Philadelphia celebrated
Mother’s Day on May 10, 1908.

Six years later, President
Woodrow Wilson officially proclaimed the second Sunday in May as
Mother’s Day. In the following years Mother’s Day became popular in
India, China, Mexico, Scandinavia, England and Switzerland.

The
first Mother’s Day in Germany was celebrated in 1933. In the initial
years in Germany, mothers were not honored for their devoted work but
were rewarded for the number of children they had. In 1938, Adolf
Hitler awarded mothers with the “mother’s cross” to honor their
outstanding help against low birth rates and death. Each year in
August, on the birthday of Hitler’s mother, he gave the bronze medal to
mothers with four children, the silver medal to mothers with six and
the gold medal to mothers with eight children.

After the war, it
took a while until Germans started celebrating Mother’s Day again.
People still had terrible memories of the past, as well as the current
miserable situation on their minds; they didn’t feel like calling
special attention to something that should be normal and taken for
granted.