Mother’s Day

Anna Jarvis's mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, had spent decades organizing "Mothers' Work Day Clubs" in Appalachia to improve child health and fight infant mortality. When Ann died in 1905, Anna vowed to create a day that would honor her mother and all mothers. Three years later, on May 10, 1908, Anna organized the first Mother's Day memorial service at her mother's church in Grafton, West Virginia. She sent 500 white carnations, her mother's favorite flower.

Anna campaigned for national recognition tirelessly. She wrote letters to governors, senators, department-store owners, anyone who would listen. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation declaring Mother's Day a national holiday, to be observed on the second Sunday of May. Anna was 50 years old. She had achieved her life's work.

Almost immediately, the holiday was commercialized. Florists marked up carnation prices. Hallmark released cards. Candy companies ran ads. Jarvis was horrified. She spent the next 40 years of her life fighting against the very holiday she had founded, filing lawsuits against commercial exploitation, getting arrested for disturbing the peace at florist conventions, picketing card stores. She died in 1948 in a sanitarium, having bankrupted herself fighting the commercialization.

The commercial part is real, Americans spend $30+ billion on Mother's Day every year. The sincere part is also real. Mother's Day is the most telephoned day of the year more phone calls made than any other day on the American calendar. The point Anna was trying to make still holds: it's the specific personal gesture, not the mass-produced card, that honors a mother.

Four ideas that beat a $12 bouquet from the grocery store:

Mother's Day is celebrated worldwide, six different versions: