What is Mother’s Peace Day?

In the beginning, Mother’s Day was not about hearts and flowers, or a box of chocolates. It was about world peace. Julia Ward Howe - wife, mother, poet, volunteer, early abolitionist and suffragette - called for the celebration of an annual “Mother’s Peace Day” to dramatize the cause of world disarmament.

Howe was not a pacifist (after all, she wrote The Battle Hymn of the Republic during the US Civil War) but she wanted the world to find an alternative to war. A full century before the nuclear arms race, she spoke to audiences all over the globe about the irony - and the folly - of stockpiling weapons in the name of peace.

Howe correctly predicted that women as a bloc would be more likely to support disarmament: “Arise then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts! From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says, ‘Disarm, disarm!”

Mother’s Peace Day Proclamation, 1872 Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have taught them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”    —Julia Ward Howe

And so, today, we honor all mothers - whether biological or spiritual - all nurturing women, all people everywhere who cherish the gift of peace as basic to all others - in their homes and in the world.