Q. My mother died many years ago, and although I still miss her greatly, I don't miss the pressure of having to do something ''special'' on Mother's Day. Can Action Line explain how did this whole commercial enterprise got started, anyway?
-- P. M., Miami
A. It's thought that it started with the ancient Greeks who paid tribute to Rhea, the mother of the gods.
In England, it was common by the 17th Century to allow servants to take the fourth Sunday of Lent off to go Midlenting or Mothering. Traditionally, they took a ''simnel'' cake to their mothers as a gift of appreciation. But according to others, it was an opportunity to return to the ``Mother Church.''
Mothering Sunday, as it became known, was officially incorporated into the Anglican Church by 1720.
Julia Ward Howe (who wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic) brought the idea from England to the United States after the Civil War. Her 1870 Mother's Day Proclamation wasn't a praise of motherhood but an antiwar call to mothers everywhere.
The quest to honor mothers was taken up by Anna Jarvis from Grafton, W. Va., who wanted to honor her own mother in particular. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation recognizing the second Sunday in May, the anniversary of the death of Jarvis's mother, as Mother's Day.
This Sunday marks 100 years of Mother's Day services held by the Methodist church in Grafton.
Commercialization of the day was inevitable, and Mother's Day is now celebrated, although on different days, by many countries around the globe.
