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The Ultimate Event Guide for the FrankfurtRhineMain Metropolitan Region
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Mother's Day

Mother's Day is on May 12, 2024! The breakfast table will be lovingly set for mom again, beautiful pictures will be painted, bouquets of flowers and chocolates will be bought. And a certain Heintje will no doubt be belting out his immortal "Mama" in some households. In this special, we want to give you a few tips on what you can do in Frankfurt on Mother's Day. We would also like to shed some light on the origins of Mother's Day.

Mother's Day in Frankfurt

In Frankfurt there are many nice ways to pamper mothers especially this Sunday. Flowers actually always conjure up a happy smile on the faces of the recipients. Where you get especially beautiful flowers in Frankfurt, we tell you HERE.

For those who do not want to set a rich breakfast table themselves, there are of course many alternatives in the city. Some offers we have put together for you HERE.

Who wants to give his mother or his wife a special dinner on this day, for that we have HERE some tips for fine dining in Frankfurt.

Excursion tips:

After brunch or before going out to eat, a nice excursion would be just the thing for a successful Mother's Day. Unfortunately, there are also here pandemic-conditioned some restrictions Nevertheless, there are in and around Frankfurt a few beautiful destinations for a joint walk. Our tips:

Mother's Day at the Fraport Visitors Center

In the Fraport Visitors Center, the new world of experience at Frankfurt Airport, there is a very special Mother's Day to experience. In addition to a small surprise for every mother and a photo station for beautiful family photos, there is plenty more to see and experience here. You can find all further info HERE

A visit to the Palm Garden

Here, not only the many beautiful flowers and exotic plants provide a particularly atmospheric atmosphere. There an atmospheric family outing is guaranteed! More info HERE

Alternatively, it is always worth a visit to the neighboring Botanical Garden or one of the beautiful parks in the city area.

Comical art in the GrünGürtel

With a nice walk or a bike ride along the GrünGürtel you can also enjoy Mother's Day. In our InsideFFM blog we invite you to discover works of comic art in the GrünGürtel. You can find the blog post HERE

Origin of Mother's Day

Now that we've given you a few tips for Mother's Day, let's get to the bottom of the question: Where did this tradition actually come from? As with many of our festivals and days of honor today, their origins can be found in ancient times. The original mother of the ancient Greeks was the goddess Rhea (Rhea means: river of life), daughter of Uranus and Gaea, and mother of all gods and goddesses. The mother cult that arose in her honor was celebrated as part of a great spring festival.

To this end, the Encyclopædia Britannica (1959, vol. 15, p. 849) states:

"A festival derived from the custom of mother worship in ancient Greece. A formal mother-cult, with ceremonies for Kybele or Rhea, the great mother of the gods, was practiced on the Ides of March throughout Asia Minor."

In 13th-century England, the Sunday of Laetare was celebrated as the Sunday of the Lord. By the mid-nineteenth century, Laetare Sunday was observed as "mothering sunday", when people gave thanks to Mother Church for her motherhood and, as a result, gave thanks to their birth mother.

As early as 1644, it was reported: "Every Mid-Lent Sunday is a great day at Worcester, when all the children and grantchildren meet at the head and chief of the family and have a feast. They call it Mothering Day."

The Sunday meant here (Lätare) was used by children living away from home to visit their parents (go a-mothering) and thank their mother with small gifts.

In Thuringia, Lätare (Mid-Fast Sunday) was a general visiting day with generous entertaining of relatives.

Similar traditions are known from Champagne and Wallonia.

Frankfurt's poet prince Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote quasi as a tribute to his mother:

"Vom Vater hab´ ich die Statur,

Of life's serious leading,

From mother's cheerfulness,

The delight to fable."

And an old folktale expresses mother-love as follows:

Live happily, live cheerfully,

live on in health,

live many years more!

Dear mother, live on!

Where does Mother's Day come from?

In 1872, writer and women's rights activist Julia Ward Howe went public with a demand that American mothers be given an official holiday.

Anna Jarvis of Philadelphia took up the idea again, celebrating a thanksgiving service at the church in her hometown of Grafton, West Virginia, on May 9, 1907 - the 2nd anniversary of her mother's death. She also launched an initiative to establish an official holiday to honor mothers. While "Mother's Day" initially started only in Philadelphia in 1908, 45 American states adopted this commemorative day by the following year.

The publicity campaign was ultimately crowned with success when, on May 8, 1914, President Woodrow Wilson established Mother's Day for every mother in the United States. May 1914 declared Mother's Day a national day of honor for every second Sunday in May.

In addition to the custom of wearing a colored carnation on that day in honor of living mothers or a white one in remembrance of those already deceased, the sending or handing of Mother's Day cards caught on from then on.

After World War I, Mother's Day was also able to establish itself in mainland Europe.

First in Switzerland (1917) and Scandinavia (1918/19), then in 1923 in Germany, where it was piquantly established by the Association of German Flower Shop Owners.

In 1933, during the "Third Reich", the National Socialists declared the family holiday a state holiday (second Sunday in May) and abused it for their mother cult ideology.

With the founding of the Federal Republic in 1949, Mother's Day once again became a purely private holiday. In the former German Democratic Republic, on the other hand, Mother's Day was not officially celebrated. It was replaced by the International Women's Day on March 8.

Today, the 2nd Sunday in May is celebrated as Mother's Day. However, if Mother's Day falls on Whit Sunday, Mother's Day can be moved to the previous Sunday. However, in 2008, even though Mother's Day fell on Whit Sunday, it was not moved.

Even today, more flowers are still given for Mother's Day than for Valentine's Day.