Mother’s Day: The Thorn in the Side of Its Founder
There is no denying that Mother’s Day is a happy one for many retailers, especially florists and jewelers. In fact, spending on flowers for Mother’s Day beats out spending for Valentine’s Day, and after Christmas, Mother’s Day is the holiday where people spend the most on gifts.
It’s also a boon for restaurants. Woe to he or she who waits to make reservations for the big day, considered the busiest for the restaurant industry. Unlike dinner-focused holidays, such as Thanksgiving or Christmas, people dine out at every time slot on Mother’s Day: breakfast, brunch, lunch, and dinner.
But in an odd twist, Anna Jarvis, the woman who put Mother’s Day on the calendar as a tribute to her own mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, eventually sought to have the holiday “cancelled,” decrying the commercialism that became associated with the day. Jarvis, who never married or had children, died penniless after depleting her funds in her fight against Mother’s Day.
An Ancient Tradition
Celebrating mothers dates back to Greco-Roman times and the honoring of goddesses Rhea and Cybele. “Mother Church” was then celebrated on the fourth Sunday of Lent in the United Kingdom and much of Europe, harkening to the belief that people would return to the church – their “spiritual mother” – during the most holy time in the Christian calendar.
In the United States, celebrating mothers had a circuitous route. Prior to the Civil War, Ann Reeves Jarvis helped found “Mother’s Day Work Clubs” with the goal of educating women in caring for their children. After the Civil War, Ann sought to use “Mothers’ Friendship Day” as a way to unify mothers of both Confederate and Union soldiers in a country still bruised by the bloodshed and divisiveness of the war between the North and the South.
A popular speaker of the day, she lectured on religion, literature, and public health. Until her death in 1905, Ann remained a staunch supporter of mothers and motherhood. Topics on which she frequently spoke included “Great Mothers of the Bible,” and the “Great Value of Hygiene for Women and Children.”
After her death, her daughter, Anna Jarvis, sought to have mothers celebrated as a tribute to her mother and the work Ann had done in the name of mothers. In 1906, she announced that she planned to hold a memorial service for Ann on the anniversary of her death, and true to her word, a private service was held in May, 1907.
Making It Official
The next year saw the first official observance of Mother’s Day, with a public service held at St. Andrew United Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia, where Ann taught and supervised Sunday School church for some 25 years. Anna donated 500 white carnations for the service, which she did not attend, opting to attend a service she had organized that was held in the Auditorium of Wanamaker’s Department Store in Philadelphia.
Anna then pursued the goal of making Mother’s Day a nationally recognized holiday, making the argument that there were no holidays geared toward women. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed a measure that declared that Mother’s Day would henceforth be celebrated on the second Sunday of May.
Retailers, especially those that sold candy and flowers, soon attached themselves (and their wares) to the holiday. Widespread commercialization of the holiday followed, much to Anna’s distress. Around 1920, she started speaking against the buying of gifts, and eventually would refer to those who profited from Mother’s Day as “charlatans, bandits, pirates, racketeers, kidnappers, and termites that would undermine with their greed one of the finest, noblest, and truest movements and celebrations.”
Stamping Her Feet
She even railed against a commemorative Mother’s Day stamp published in 1934. Based on an idea suggested by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the stamp showed the painting colloquially known as “Whistler’s Mother” with white carnations – the very flowers Anna had first used to celebrate Mother’s Day – added to the image.
Her efforts of course proved fruitless, and she spent the last active years of her life campaigning to have the holiday removed from the national calendar. She died in 1948, having lived her final years in a sanitarium in West Chester, Pennsylvania. Broke and broken at the end of her life, having depleted her finances and mental and physical health, Anna’s time in the sanitarium was partially financed by florists who remained grateful for the May windfall that befell them every year.
No doubt florists – as well as jewelers, card makers, confectioners, and countless retailers large and small – remain grateful to the woman who was never a mother herself and sought to rescind her legacy as the founder of Mother’s Day.
***https://blog.yelp.com/news/from-brunch-to-bouquets-yelp-reveals-what-moms-across-generations-really-want-for-mothers-day/
