Italy celebrates Mother's Day which has always been on the second Sunday of May for many years now. Initially the date for the anniversary is that of May 8 but it was then decided to set it on a public holiday, a Sunday, to allow everyone to celebrate this day dedicated to mothers worthily.
Mother's Day
In our country the first to celebrate this anniversary is Otello Migliosi the second Sunday of May 1957, in the village of Tordibetto in Assisi. Otello Migliosi was a priest of the diocese of Assisi, a great scholar and much appreciated for the many works he accomplished in favor of the Church. In 2006, for the tenth anniversary of his death, the municipality of Assisi he entitled the square of Tordibetto to his memory. The American spoke about Mother's Day for the first time in May 1870 Julia Ward Howe, a pacifist activist who proposes the institution of Mother's Day for Peace, as a moment of reflection against war. But despite the great effort, Howe's proposal falls on deaf ears.
Subsequently it is Anna Jarvis to celebrate for the first time the Mother’s Day (Mother's Day) in 1908. A day intended to remember his mother, also an activist who fought for peace. Jarvis supporters urge institutional and civil society representatives to turn the party into a national day to remember annually. Thus, since 1911 the anniversary has spread to almost all the States. In 1914, the president of the United States Woodrow Wilson formalizes the anniversary as a national holiday, whose symbolic flowers become roses.
The pagan deity of the great mother
In the old continent, Mother's Day has its roots in origins in a very distant time. In fact, in ancient times, Mother's Day was a symbol of the transition from cold winter to spring, season of rebirth. Almost all ancient civilizations of the past they worshiped one 'great mother', a female deity symbol of life and prosperity. For the Greeks she was there goddess Rea, mother of all gods; for the Romans it was Cybele, goddess of nature and animals. Polytheistic peoples who identified the cult of fertility and the creative force of nature in the female figure.
