There’s a fun little history of Mother’s Day article that Prairie found with some fun details about how it all got started…
On this 100th anniversary of Mother’s Day, the woman credited with creating one of the world’s most celebrated holidays probably wouldn’t be pleased with all the flowers, candy or gifts.
Anna Jarvis would want us to give mothers a white carnation — she felt it signified the purity of a mother’s love.
Jarvis, who never married and never had children, got the Mother’s Day idea after her mother said it would be nice if someone created a memorial to mothers.
Three years after her mother died in 1905, she organized the first official mother’s day service at a church where her mother had spent more than 20 years teaching Sunday school.
[…] West Virginia became the first state to recognize Mother’s Day in 1910. President Woodrow Wilson approved a resolution in 1914 marking the second Sunday in May a nationwide observance.
[…] Jarvis became increasingly disturbed as the celebration turned into an excuse to sell greeting cards, candy, flowers and other items.
Jarvis became known for scathing letters in which she would berate people who purchased greeting cards, saying they were too lazy to write personal letters “to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world.”
Before she died in 1948, she protested at a Mother’s Day celebration in New York, and was arrested for disturbing the peace.
[…] In the end, Mason said Jarvis was bitter about what the observance had become and “wished she would have never started the day because it became so out of control …”
“But when you look at Mother’s Day as being her baby of sorts, you can understand her protectiveness of it.”
See? My year-after-year failure to do anything big for Mother’s Day wasn’t being inconsiderate, absentminded or forgetful — I was just respecting the wishes of the woman who started the whole thing in the first place!
(Think that’ll fly?)
(Yeah, me neither.)
Happy Mother’s Day, Mom! And, of course, to any other mothers that might read or find their way here. :)