History Of Mothers Day
Mothers Day is a day to honor mothers, and is celebrated in many countries on different days of the year. Gifts are often given to mothers to show appreciation and love on this day. Mother’s day is held on the second Sunday of May every year.
Mother’s day was inspired by two people spanning back to the United States Civil War. Ann Jarvis and Julia Howe are two women from different times that both had ideas to bring peace during troubled times. Both called upon other mothers to join their cause.
It wasn’t until 1904 that Frank Herring made a public plea to have “a national day to honor our mothers”. Anna Jarvis, daughter of Ann Jarvis, started a tradition of handing out white carnations to mothers in her church. Anna chose Sunday to be Mother’s Day because she intended the day to be commemorated and treated as a holy day.
The custom quickly caught on and spread throughout the united states. In 1914, the US Congress passed a law designating the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day. President Woodrow Wilson signed the proclamation, declaring the first national Mother's Day, as a day for American citizens to show the flag in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war.
Nine years after the first official Mother's Day, commercialization of the U.S. holiday became so rampant that Anna Jarvis herself became a major opponent of what the holiday had become and spent all her inheritance and the rest of her life fighting what she saw as an abuse of the celebration.
Mother's Day continues to this day to be one of the most commercially successful U.S. occasions. According to the National Restaurant Association, Mother's Day is now the most popular day of the year to dine out at a restaurant in the United States. Americans will spend approximately $2.6 billion on flowers, $1.53 billion on pampering gifts, like spa treatments, and another $68 million on greeting cards