Thank you to all our blog readers and loyal customers for being patient during this time of explosive growth for us. As with all moms, we feel that our family time is and has been THE most important time in our lives here at
Haj-Paj Boutique.
Family first has been the rule and our little boutique has benefitted greatly from this rule. Now, our children are growing and time constraints are lessening (although never to be gone too far!), so we have been enjoying a much anticipated resurgence in traffic to our little boutique since making the difficult decision to move to Historic Farmington, NC. Growth was purposefully and carefully well-thought out and we are just now enjoying the fruits of these wonderful "growing pains".
We are ever so close to our website going live. We have chosen to be our OWN web designer so that we can put a special spin to our website. While this has its benefits, it also has its drawback: learning curves to the max, time constraints, and good old fashioned hair-pulling moments! If you can't teach yourself something new everyday then what good is waking up?!
So, our little boutique blog has suffered in the midst of all the wonderful chaos. We're glad that you have stayed with us as we quickly approach 5,000 page views...thank you, thank you, thank you! And we know that you've stuck with us through interactions on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram (another learning curve...where's a kindergartner when you need 'em).
On this outstanding day, please enjoy your families because never forget:
Family First!
Enjoy this repost from last Mother's Day:
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| Goddess Isis |
The tradition of celebrating Mothers has roots in early Egyptian, Roman, and Greek times. During these times "mother" Goddesses were commemorated in street festivals and with various celebrations involving cakes and flowers. The Goddess Isis was commonly regarded as the Mother of the Pharaohs. Fast forward to Early Europe and the Christians who had a holiday to honor Motherhood which fell on the fourth Sunday of Lent. That day was initially used as a day to honor the church in which you had been baptized, known as your "Mother Church". On that Sunday, each place of worship was decorated with jewels, flowers and offerings of food.
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| "Mother and Child" by George Hatsatouris |
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Sometime during the 1600's a clerical decree in England added real Mothers to the celebration and that day became known as Mothering Day. On that day, a one day reprieve from Lenten fasting was provided so that all could enjoy a family feast where mothers were the guest of honor. They were presented with cakes and flowers as well as visits from beloved distant children. Push that fast forward button again...when the first English settlers came to America, they discontinued the Mothering Day tradition. While the Mothering Day holiday lived on in England, an American Mother's Day was conceptualized many years later by the woman who had written The Battle Hymn of the Republic, Julia Ward Howe. Howe wrote the Mother's Day Proclamation in 1870 in response to the overwhelming deaths of young men in the Civil War. She was calling on all mothers to come together to celebrate peace and motherhood. She had initially proposed July 4th as the new date of Mother's Day as a symbol of peace in our nation, but eventually June 2nd was settled on.
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| Anna Reeves Jarvis |
That date was celebrated for a few fledgling years, but it took a West Virginia woman named Anna Reeves Jarvis to bring us to the Mother's Day we know today. Reeves began an adaptation of Howe's holiday which called for mothers to re-unite families and neighbors that had been divided by the war. This new day was called Mother's Friendship Day. After Reeves' death her daughter, Anna M. Jarvis, petitioned the church where her mother had spent 20 years teaching Sunday school, to honor her mother with a day of celebration. On May 10, 1908 the first official Mother's Day took place at Andrew's Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia and in another church in Philadelphia. Jarvis' favorite flower, the white carnation, was given to each mother. In 1912, West Virginia became the first state to officially recognize Mother's Day and in 1914 Woodrow Wilson signed it into national observance by declaring the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day.
