Not just a Hallmark creation, Mother's Day has been around for a lot longer than you'd think. In fact the English have been celebrating Mothering Sunday since the 1600's, and it's been around in the United States ever since 1907 when a woman named Ana Javris decided to make it happen.
You see, Ana Jarvis loved her mom, but one day Ana Jarvis' mom died. So, Ana went to her church in West Virginia and asked them nicely to have a day to remember her mom on the anniversay of her mom's death (the 2nd Sunday in May). The next year she decided to take it a step farther. She started a campaign to lobby every state in the union to adopt the day as a holiday and by 1914 Woodrow Wilson made Mother's Day a national holiday.
Sadly the story doesn't end there. As time passed Ana Jarvis began to take exception with what she considered to be the commercialization of the holiday. Thoroughly disenchanted she filed an unsuccessful lawsuit to prevent a Mother's Day festival in 1923. Later she was arrested for picking fights with a group of war mother's because the women had coopted her Mother's Day white carnations to raise money for the boys at war overseas.
Shortly before her death in 1948, bankrupt, bitter, and losing her marbles she told a reporter the she regretted ever starting the darn holiday.
Happy Mother's Day!
