"There is ONE DAY in the year we do not talk of POOR MOTHERS and ask charity for them," Jarvis once wrote.Īs idealistic as Jarvis was, she was also a hustler when it came to promoting her "holy day." She reached out to powerful leaders, the floral industry, and others like wealthy department store owner John Wanamaker. "It was very much seeing motherhood through the eyes of a child." Jarvis retreated from her mother's socially conscious vision for Mother's Day in favor of one that idolized the mother's individual role.Īnna's vision of Mother's Day was one in which children gave personal messages of appreciation to mothers, possibly bought a white carnation for them, and credited their mothers with a nearly sacred domestic role. She has no idea what motherhood means from the eye of the mother," Antolini says. "A lot of it is that Anna herself never marries or has children. Her vision of motherhood stayed constant through the years for a couple of reasons. She selected the second Sunday in May because it marked the anniversary of her mother's death and she wanted Mother's Day to always fall on the Sabbath. Though there had been other contemporaneous celebrations of Mother's Day - one from 1873 even earned national attention - Jarvis's became the most famous.
Anna Jarvis believed Mother's Day should serve as a solemn tribute to the living and deceased mothers of the world.
The location hints at the holiday's religious and spiritual roots. On May 10, 1908, 400 people congregated at Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church in Grafton, West Virginia, to celebrate the first Mother's Day. The holiday was born as a "holy day" celebrating mothersĪnna Jarvis, the founder of Mother's Day, in 1910.Īnna Jarvis founded Mother's Day in 1908, when she was 44 (three years after her own mother had died). But in the process, she incorporated her own unique vision of what being a mother meant. She said her mother once ended a Bible lesson with a prayer for someone to found a memorial mother's day, and Anna did just that. That activism made a strong impression on one of Jarvis's daughters, Anna Jarvis. To, motherhood wasn't just contained, it was about a broader family."
"It was about motherhood in a larger sense and having a responsibility to the community at large. "It was mothers being proactive," Antolini says. Their motto reflected that vision: "Mothers Work - for Better Mothers, Better Homes, Better Children, Better Men and Women." The groups sought to help mothers team up to put a dent in high infant mortality and combat other problems. In response, Jarvis started Mothers' Day Work Clubs. Caused by everything from poor sanitation to contaminated milk, it was a problem that Anne Reeves Jarvis was all too familiar with: only four of her 13 children survived into adulthood. In the 19th century, there were extremely high infant mortality rates in the area that's West Virginia today. That's because it began with the mother of the woman who ultimately established Mother's Day. But we can safely say the American holiday had its beginnings in the 1850s. Mother's Day began with mothers working togetherĪ Civil War–era picture of a mother and her child.īefore the 1850s, there were celebrations of mothers, including ancient rituals for goddesses like the Greek Rhea and the Roman Cybele. It shares the complete story of the woman who conceived and tirelessly promoted Mother's Day, and it also shows just how dramatically the holiday has changed since it began. Just before one Mother's Day, I spoke to Katharine Lane Antolini, author of the book Memorializing Motherhood: Anna Jarvis and the Struggle for Control of Mother’s Day. But the holiday began very differently - it started as a way to help mothers work together, and it only transformed more from there.
Mother's Day has its rituals: little kids make Mom breakfast or buy a small present, adults send a card, and those who have lost their mothers try to just ignore it.
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