A Completely True History Of Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day.  As you were all out buying your last minute gifts that you hoped appeared at least somewhat thoughtful, you were probably thinking, “Where the heck did this holiday come from?”  Well you’re in luck, because I’m here to explain.  Grab a cookie or some of the candy you bought for your mom, and I’ll sort it out for you.

Although early tributes to mom can be traced back to Egypt, Greece, and Rome, I’m going to focus on the modern American holiday.  It’s more relevant to why you just spent fifty dollars at Hallmark. Perhaps the ancient history would be worth exploring if there was a Mother’s Day pyramid in Cairo, or if moms had fought it out in the Colisseum for the title of #1 Mom in the Roman Empire.  But alas, none of that actually happened.

Modern Mother’s Day can be traced to a woman named Anna Jarvis.  In 1908, she took ideas from Julia Ward Howe and her own mother, Anne Reeves Jarvis, and convinced her Methodist Church to hold a Mother’s Day celebration.  So, on May 10, 1908, two separate celebrations were held.  One at Ms. Reeves church in Grafton West Virginia, and one in Philadelphia.  People loved the idea.  Later that year the YMCA petitioned congress to make it a national holiday. Because who loves moms more than bikers, indian chiefs, cops, and construction workers. That effort didn’t succeed, but the next year, some kind of Mother’s Day celebration was happening in forty six states.  Anna Jarvis kept up her own pressure on congress, and in 1914 Mother’s Day was declared a national holiday.  Yay Anna.

Anna had meant for the holiday to be a personal thing.  You get together with your mom, have some one on one time, and maybe go to church.  This is America though, and by the time 1920 rolled around, the holiday had been thoroughly commercialized by the greeting card, floral, and confection industries.  This caused Jarvis to completely lose her mind.  She openly campaigned against the commercialization.  She tried to copyright Mother’s Day so others couldn’t use the term.  She railed against anyone that she thought was tainting the purity of her day with mom, never stopping to think that mom was making out like a bandit because of all of this.  For twenty eight years she kept up this goofy fight, even protesting Eleanor Roosevelt’s celebration of the day.  She never married or had children, and spent most of her money in legal fees in an endless crusade against the day that she created.  At age 84, Anna was nearly penniless when she passed on in a Philadelphia sanitarium.  She never knew that during her final days, it was actually the The Florists Exchange that had provided for her care.

For the small fee of five dollars, you can tour the home where Anna Jarvis grew up.  In an interesting and entirely creepy side note.  You can do a “ghost tour” of the house at certain times.  Apparently the Ghostbusters have informed the owners that the place is haunted.  The ghost squatters include Anna Jarvis’ mother, a boy who haunts one of the closets, and a couple of other kids.  So, yes, dead children allegedly haunt the childhood home of the lady who founded Mother’s Day.  That’s not disturbing at all.

Next time you feel like taking up the cause of brand new holiday, remember a couple of things. A:  Whatever you create will be commercialized.  Deal with it.  B:  After you die, people will come along and claim that your now historical home is haunted by random folks because, A: whatever you create will be commercialized.

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY