They voted against Mother's Day. (Flashback).(holiday history)(Brief Article)

In the annals of easy votes, one might expect to find a prominent place for the congressional resolution to establish Mother's Day. Yet the first Mother's Day legislation was actually hooted down.

Mother's Day was the brainchild of Anna Jarvis, a Philadelphia woman stricken with grief over the death of her saintly mother in May 1905. Two years later, Miss Jarvis organized memorial services for her mother. Then, in one of those mad boundless leaps taken only by the most creative holiday entrepreneurs, Anna Jarvis went national. She decided that henceforth, on the anniversary of her mother's death, all Americans ought to honor the women who gave them birth.

In May 1908, freshman Senator Elmer Burkett (R-NE) put Miss Jarvis's proposal before his colleagues. It was not a Hallmark moment.

The senator explained that Mother's Day legislation was a special request of the Young Men's Christian Association, which, he noted, was doing valiant work in the "gathering together of the boys for social intercourse." (A theme later elaborated upon by the Village People in their timeless disco tribute.) Mother's Day, said Senator Burkett, would remind "boys from the country who are in the cities and among strangers" to think of "the old homes they left behind and the mothers who gave them birth."

Senator Burkett's mawkish but sincere discourse was met by a hail of mockery. The neophyte legislator was astonished by the ridicule heaped upon his innocent proposal. "I did not expect that a single objection would be offered" he averred; he was offended to hear "light made of it" by his gray colleagues.

Senator John Kean (R-NJ) immediately moved to amend Burkett's measure by striking everything after "Resolved" and substituting the Fifth Commandment: "Honor thy father and thy mother."

Senator Henry Moore Teller (D-CO) scorned the resolution as "puerile," "absolutely absurd," and "trifling." He announced, "Every day with me is a mother's day."