Mother's Day Flowers
Many mothers receive flowers on Mother's Day. There are many more gifts to chose from; however, what expresses beauty and apreciation like flowers? After all, it is common for little children to pick flowers for their mothers when they are very small and give to the mother as a gift. Flowers represent love and beauty. They speak a language of their own. And many may not know that "gifts" are one of the five love languages of every human being. So when you give someone flowers for a gift, it can be double pleasure. No matter how old children get, many still want to please their Mother with flowers.
Below is some information about how Mother's Day came into exsistence and some additional information on flowers for gifts on this special day.
Back in 1910, West Virginia became the first state with an official Mother's Day. Then in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed Mother's Day a national holiday. This all came about through the efforts of Anna M. Jarvis. In May of 1907, she asked her preacher to speak in her mother's memory at a church service. The very next year the church bell rung 72 times, representing each year of her mother's life. Her mother had organized Mother's Work Clubs in West Virginia towns before the civil war and organized a Mother's Friendship Day to help heal the post-war scars and bad feelings (this mother had lost four children during the war). Anna began a campaign by writing many letters and lobbing congressmen and the final result was a a proclamation of a national Mother's Day holiday in 1914.
Anna did not intend for Mother's Day to be so commercialized as it is today. However, flowers are a very popular gift for Mothers on their special day. And what woman would not want flowers?
Carnations are possibly the most traditional Mother's Day flower stemming, I suppose from the days of 1907 since Anna Jarvis gave five hundred carnations to the attendees of the church service in her mother's memory. White carnations represented "purity". However, today white flowers on Mother's Day represent a mother that is not living. Listed below is a guide concerning the color of flowers and their meanings:
A carnation of the color pink is symbolic of gratitude and love. Red carnations signify admiration while white carnations are traditional flowers to give or wear in memory of a mother who is no longer living.
Rose blooms that are mature send a message of gratitude. And white roses are symbolic of virtue, purity and reverence. Yellow roses represent devotion and a medium pink color represents grace while a dark pink color represents gratitude. A light pink rose is symbolic of youthful joy.
A tradition that some people continue for Mothe's Day is the tradition of wearing a red rose corsage representative of a living mother of the person wearing the corsage and a white rose corsage representing a mother who is no longer living. One rose or serveral roses are appropriate for a female's corsage, however; tradition allows for only one average size rose for the men following the same representation of color as stated above.
