Mother’s Day has become a time-honored holiday in our society but how did it start?
Anna Jarvis (1864–1948) of West Virginia is the founder of Mother’s Day in the United States. She attended college and worked in West Virginia’s public school system. Anna later moved to Tennessee and worked as a bank teller for a year. She then moved to Philadelphia to live with her brother where she became very successful.
Anna worked for Fidelity Mutual Life Insurance Company and became their first female literary and advertising editor. But despite the distance, Anna always remained close to her mother back in West Virginia.
Anna’s mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, often expressed an interest in starting an official holiday that celebrated mothers for the sacrifices they made for their children and the influence they had in our society. In the years before the Civil War, Ann helped start “Mothers’ Day Work Clubs” which taught women how to properly care for their children.
The groups later became a force that unified this region of the country which was still divided over the Civil War. In 1868 Anna organized “Mothers’ Friendship Day,” which gathered former Union and Confederate soldiers to promote reconciliation and charitable work.
Three years after her mother’s death, Anna organized another “Mother’s Day” event. On May 10, 1908, she held a memorial service at her late mother’s church in Grafton, West Virginia.
Anna also provided 500 white carnations to celebrate all the mothers in attendance because it was her mom’s favorite flower.
She once stated, “Its whiteness is to symbolize the truth, purity and broad-charity of mother love; its fragrance, her memory, and her prayers. The carnation does not drop its petals, but hugs them to its heart as it dies, and so, too, mothers hug their children to their hearts, their mother love never dying.
“When I selected this flower, I was remembering my mother’s bed of white pinks.”
Anna, who remained unmarried and childless her entire life, then resolved to see her holiday added to the national calendar. She believed American holidays were biased toward male achievements and started a letter writing campaign to newspapers and prominent politicians urging the adoption of a special day honoring mothers.
Within five years virtually every state was observing the day, and President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed May 9, 1914, the first Mother’s Day. The holiday is now celebrated on the second Sunday in May each year in the United States which was Anna’s idea because it would always fall close to the date of her mother’s death – May 9.
Mother’s Day is also celebrated on different days in many parts of the world, most commonly in the months of March or May.
It quickly became a tradition to wear a white carnation corsage on Mother’s Day. By the 1920’s, the floral industry increased the price of white carnations. They then starting using red carnations to meet the heavy demand for the white flowers, which usually sold out. Eventually the red carnation represented living mothers and the white carnation honored mothers who had passed away.
Unfortunately, as the years passed, Anna became discontent over the growing commercialization of Mother’s Day and tried to have the holiday rescinded in 1943. She emphasized, “A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world. And candy! You take a box to Mother — and then eat most of it yourself. A pretty sentiment. ”
Anna’s ongoing efforts to keep the original meaning of Mother’s Day intact, led to personal economic hardship. She filed approximately 33 lawsuits against confectioners, florists and charities that used the name “Mother’s Day.”
Anna never profited from the commercialization of Mother’s Day and refused offers of money from those who did. Destitute from legal fees and campaigns to stop Mother’s Day, she spent her later years living with her sister, Lillie.
Eventually Anna was admitted to a sanitorium due to being nearly blind and deaf. People involved in the floral and greeting card industries reportedly paid the bills to keep her in treatment there until she died on Nov. 24, 1948.
Although Anna had no control over the way Mother’s Day changed from she and her mother’s original ideation, she is honored for creating the annual recognition and remembrance of our mothers. Happy Mother’s Day to every woman, living or dead, who is a mother, acts as a mother, or has a motherly influence on each of our lives.
