Mother's Day History
In 1914 Woodrow Wilson signed a bill recognizing Mother's Day as a national holiday. It all started long before that year though. Here's a little background on this special day...

There are a lot of holidays that were made up in greeting card company boardrooms, but not Mother's Day. The Annual Spring Festival was where the Greeks dedicated to Rhea, the mother of many deities, and to the offerings ancient Romans made to their Great Mother of Gods, Cybele. Christians celebrated this on the fourth Sunday in Lent in honor of Mary, mother of Jesus. In the 1600s in England, they decided to expand this holiday to include all mothers and was called Mothering Sunday.

In the United States, after the Civil War, Anna Jarvis, who was an Appalachian homemaker, organized a day to raise awareness of poor health conditions in her community. This was a cause she believed would be best advocated by mothers and called it "Mother's Work Day."

In 1872 Julia Ward Howe, a Boston an American writer, lecturer, reformer, and author of the lyrics to the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," organized a day encouraging mothers to rally for peace, since she believed they bore the loss of human life more harshly than anyone else.

In 1907 when Anna Jarvis died, her daughter, also named Anna, held a memorial for her mother and then began the began a quest to to memorialize the life work of her mother. Legend has it that young Anna remembered a Sunday school lesson that her mother gave in which she said, "I hope and pray that someone, sometime, will found a memorial mother's day. There are many days for men, but none for mothers."

Anna lobbied prominent businessmen like John Wannamaker, and politicians including Presidents Taft and Roosevelt to support her campaign to create a special day to honor mothers. On May 9, 1914 when Woodrow Wilson signed a bill recognizing Mother's Day as a national holiday that was to be held each year on the 2nd Sunday of May, Anna's hard work paid off .

People first observed Mother's Day by attending church, writing letters to their mothers, and eventually, by sending cards, presents, and flowers. Anna Jarvis became enraged with the increasing gift-giving activity associated with Mother's Day. She believed that the day's sentiment was being sacrificed at the expense of greed and profit. In 1923 she filed a lawsuit to stop a Mother's Day festival, and was even arrested for disturbing the peace at a convention selling carnations (Jarvis' symbol for mothers) for a war mother's group. She eventually lost everything and everyone that was close to her and died alone in a sanatorium in 1948. Before her death, Anna is said to have confessed that she regretted ever starting the mother's day tradition.

Mother's Day lives on, regardless of whether it meets Anna's approval. Many countries throughout the world celebrate Mother's Day at various times throughout the year, but some such as Denmark, Finland, Italy, Turkey, Australia, and Belgium also celebrate Mother's Day on the second Sunday of May.