Mother’s Day
母亲节
mǔqīnjié

Mother’s Day falls on different days in different countries in all months except January. Mother’s Day has a few different origins. One emerges from ancient Greece with the festival of Cybele, a great mother of Greek gods. The ancient Romans had another holiday, Matronalia, which was dedicated to Juno. Some countries also celebrate Mother’s Day on International Women’s Day on March 8. In China Mother’s Day is growing in popularity and carnations are the most popular flowers to give. The first Mother’s Day in the USA was started by Anna Jarvis who in 1907 passed out 500 white carnations in her church in Grafton, West Virgina. The first Mother’s Day service was celebrated on May 10, 1908. Nine years after the first official Mother’s Day Anna Jarvis saw an abuse of the holiday with the rampant commercialization that had come with the holiday. Hence, she spent the rest of her life and her inheritance fighting to have the holiday abolished. She was even arrested in 1948 for disturbing the peace while protesting Mother’s Daysaying she “wished she would have never started the day because it became so out of control…”. This aside, Mother’s Day is still celebrated in the USA with the giving of gifts even generating nearly 8% of the US jewelry industry’s revenue in 2008.

不同国家有各自的母亲节。除了1月份之外，几乎每个月都有不同国家的母亲节。母亲节有几个不同的来历：一个是源自古希腊的西布莉节，西布莉是古希腊的众神之母；而古罗马有一个祭祀女神朱诺的主妇节（Matronalia）；还有一些国家在3月8日国际妇女节时庆祝母亲节。在中国，母亲节日益流行起来，康乃馨是最受欢迎的母亲节馈赠花卉。美国的第一个母亲节是由安娜•贾维斯在1907年发起的，她在西弗吉尼亚州位于格拉夫顿的教堂向教会里的母亲们赠送了500支白色的康乃馨。第一个母亲节的庆祝活动是在1908年5月10日。过后的第九年，安娜•贾维斯感到这个节日已被日益泛滥的商业化气息充斥。因此，安娜在剩余的人生里，为废止母亲节这一目的而倾尽家财。她甚至因为抗议母亲节而在1948年被捕，她说“希望我从来没有发起过这个节日，因为它变得如此背离初衷…” 。但事与愿违，美国的母亲节仍然以馈赠礼物的方式庆祝着，在2008年甚至创造了美国珠宝行业近8%的财政收入。