This Sunday is Mother’s Day… A holiday where we show our appreciation through cards and brunches. But the day has a slightly sad origin.
According to National Geographic… It was started to remember fallen soldiers and promote peace. In the mid-19th century before the Civil War. A woman named Ann Reeves Jarvis organized mother’s day events to teach proper care for their children. Post war, the gatherings would be used to promote pacifism and reconciliation between former Union and Confederate soldiers.
Following her death in 1905… her daughter Anna Jarvis carried on the tradition, as a day to privately celebrate one’s own mother. But popularity carried it far beyond Anna’s original concept as it was picked up by card companies, florists, and other merchants.
Today the holiday is a huge commercial event. The National Retail Federation says last year the average American spent around $170 on their mother. That adds up to expected spending this year of more than $21 billion dollars.
As for Anna, she spent the rest of her life fighting to restore the holiday to its traditional roots. She organized protests, launched lawsuits and disrupted Mothers’ Day events… dying childless and penniless in a sanitarium in 1948.
