The Skinny: A Brief History of Mothers Day

How did it all start?

Before the Civil War in West Virginia, Ann Reves Jarvis created “Mothers’ Day Work Clubs" to teach local women how to properly care for their children.
After the Civil War, Ann Jarvis renamed them to “Mothers’ Friendship Day,” where she gathers mothers with former Union and Confederate soldiers to promote reconciliation.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, there were groups all over the united states honoring mothers and promoting some kind of “mothers day” (including Juliet Calhoun Blakely, and Mary Towles Sasseen and Frank Hering).
It wasn’t until Ann Reves Jarvis’ passing that her daughter Anna Jarvis was able to officially create the national holiday.

Anna Jarvis Paves The Way

After the passing of her mother in 1905, Anna conceived of Mother’s Day as a way of honoring the sacrifices mothers made for their children.
With the finical help of a Philadelphia Department Store, the first Mothers Day celebration was in May of 1908 at a Methodist church in West Virginia.
That same day thousands of people attend a Mother’s Day event at one of the said retail stores in Philadelphia.
She placed the date to be the second Sunday of May honoring the date of her mothers death.
After the success, Jarvis petitioned to make the day a national holiday through a massive letter writing campagin to newspapers and politicians.
By 1912 many states, towns, and churches had added Mother’s Day as an annual holiday.
Jarvis established the Mother’s Day international Association to help promote her cause.
In 1914 President Woorow Wilson signed a measure officially establishing the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day.

Anna Jarvis Petitions Against Mother’s Day

Orginaly a day celebrated at church between mothers and families soon turned comercial.
Florists, card companies, and other venders soon jumped to capitalize on the popularity.
By 1920 he became disgusted with the commercialization.
Jarvis publicly denounced the holiday and urged people to stop buying Mother’s Day flowers, cards, and chocolates.
Jarvis started an official campaign against Mother’s Day companies and even attempted countless lawsuits against groups that used “Mother’s Day” in their branding. Spending almost all of her personal money in legal fees.
She continued to activly lobby the government to remove it from the calendar until her death in 1948.
Jarvis died unmarried and bore no children.

The Takeaway

Anna Jarvis’ story, is a bit tragic but also so human.
She loved her mother so much, this whole national holiday was personally just to honor her own mother.
It honored her and her legacy of gathering mothers together.
Anna Jarvis wasn’t even a mother herself- and yet she knew the power of a good motherhood community.
She saw how mothers on different sides of a war still had their motherhoodness (is that a word?) in common.
Parenting is so universal it can unite all cultures, races, and religions. “Guess what my kid said to ME the other day!”
There is also something to be said about community. Parenting can often feel isolating, and while we all know you’re supposed to have a village, sometimes it takes time to build up the village. Sometimes mama needs some friends going through the same thing to vent to.

So reach out to all your mom friends this Mother’s Day. Let them know they are not alone and that they are doing a great job. You got this moms!

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