Mother's Day: The history of the holiday and when it is celebrated this year
Kyiv • UNN
Mother's Day in Ukraine is celebrated on May 10. This holiday symbolizes the resilience of the nation and honors the role of women in preserving cultural values.
Mother's Day is one of the warmest holidays of spring. It is celebrated in many countries around the world. It is not just another date on the calendar when it is customary to give flowers or say pleasant words out of politeness. It is a special day filled with deep philosophical meaning that makes us reflect on the phenomenon of motherly love, its absolute sacrifice, and its influence on the formation of both an individual personality and entire nations. Mother's Day does not have a fixed date. When it is celebrated in Ukraine this year - UNN will tell you.
History of the holiday - Mother's Day
Motherhood has long been perceived not only as a natural process but as a high spiritual mission that ensures the continuity of the human race and the transmission of fundamental cultural and moral values from generation to generation.
The history of this holiday's origin dates back to deep antiquity. Even in ancient Greece, spring festivities were held in honor of Rhea, the great mother of the gods, and in Rome, the goddess Cybele was praised. With the advent of Christianity in Europe, the tradition of celebrating Mothering Sunday arose, when people returned en masse to their main church. However, the modern format of Mother's Day has a very specific history that began in the United States of America at the beginning of the twentieth century. In nineteen hundred and eight, a young American woman, Anna Jarvis, publicly proposed honoring mothers in memory of her mother, who had tragically passed away. Her efforts were crowned with grand success, and by 1914, this day became an official national holiday in the USA and quickly spread across the entire planet.
When Mother's Day was established and is celebrated in Ukraine
In the Ukrainian historical context, this holiday acquired a special, sacred, and social significance from the very beginning. The tradition of mass honoring of mothers was initiated by the efforts of the Ukrainian Women's Association of Canada in 1928, and just a year later, the holiday was celebrated in Lviv. This process of national awakening was extremely actively supported by the press of that time. On the pages of leading periodicals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, among which the "Literary-Scientific Bulletin" held a special place, articles and essays praising the image of the mother-guardian (Berehynia) were constantly published. The intelligentsia perfectly understood that the mother-woman is that first source from which a child absorbs their native language, traditions, and love for their land, becoming a guarantee for the preservation of national identity.
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This theme resonates particularly sharply through the prism of studying the historical and social resilience of our people. Throughout dramatic centuries, the Ukrainian mother was forced to show incredible strength of spirit every day, selflessly protecting her children from hardships, wars, and repressions. Very often, finding herself in forced emigration, under a foreign sky, far from home, it was she who remained that single reliable island of safety that prevented the family from breaking or losing its roots forever. Her daily, quiet, yet titanic work turned into a true act of high heroism. This eternal theme of the ability to preserve an inner nourishing light despite external darkness permeates our cultural heritage, making the image of the mother an absolute symbol of the resilience of Ukraine itself.
Mother's Day does not have a fixed date. It is celebrated on the second Sunday of May. This year, it is May 10.
The celebration of Mother's Day becomes more popular every year. In our modern world, which is often excessively fast and pragmatic, unconditional motherly love remains that single life-saving anchor that gives a person a sense of stability and deep peace. This holiday reminds us of the need to stop our race for at least a moment and sincerely thank the person who gave us life, who spent sleepless nights, and who always remains on our side.