Mother’s Day - An Origin Story

Mother’s Day is a known and loved holiday in the US. This is a day of appreciation to all the mothers and all they do for their children. But it wasn’t always celebrated.

The origins of Mother’s Day go back to the 19th century when Ann Reeves Jarvis, a woman from West Virginia, started “Mother’s Day Work Clubs” that taught women how to take care of their children. Around the same time, a couple of years after Ann Reeves Jarvis’s initiatives, the suffragette Julia Ward Howe wrote “The Mother’s Day Proclamation.” It encouraged all mothers to get together and promote world peace. 

Soon after, the official Mother’s Day appeared. In 1905 Ann Reeves Jarvis died, and following her death, her daughter, Anne Jarvis, started Mother's Day as a way to celebrate and honor all mothers and what they do for their children. The first official celebration Anne Jarvis organized was sponsored by the owner of the department store in Philadelphia, John Wanamaker. It took place in a Methodist church in Grafton, West Virginia, and on the same day, thousands of people attended a Mother's Day event in one of the department stores in Philadelphia as well. 

Anne Jarvis worked hard to make Mother’s Day an official holiday in the US. By 1912 a lot of cities throughout the US had adopted the tradition of celebrating Mother’s Day, and finally, in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed the document that officially established the celebration of Mother’s Day on the second Sunday of May. 

Of course, the big popularity of Mother’s Day made it very commercial. Soon after the holiday became official, flower, cards, and candy companies started their campaigns selling more and more goods for Mother’s Day. 

Anne Jarvis, who did not intend this to happen, and saw Mother’s Day as a quiet holiday that brought families together, was disappointed by such commercialization. She spent the rest of her life suing companies that used the name “Mother’s Day” in their advertisement and even tried to remove the holiday from the calendar of American Holidays. 

As we can see today, that did not work, and we are still celebrating Mother’s Day. Gifts became a part of the tradition, but Amme Jarvis’s intentions were not forgotten either. Mother’s Day brings families together every year to celebrate the amazing jobs mothers do raising their children.

Article by Maria Zakharova