Happy Mother's Day to all of our beautiful and hardworking mothers!
For 100 years, people all around the world have dedicated one day a year to celebrate and give back to the one person who has selflessly put others before themselves. With brunches, homemade gifts and cards, or even those you have bought at the store; we have found ways to show our appreciation and love.
Unfortunately, with all this cheeriness, Mother's Day has a darker history than most would realize. It all began in the 1850s, when Ann Reeves Jarvis created the Mother's Day work club. This club was intended to improve sanitary conditions and to lower infant mortality by fighting disease and curbing milk contamination. Many could see a great success from what Ann had started, and with the help of her daughter, Anna, this succession continued up until Ann's death in 1905.
To honor her mother's death, Anna organized the first Mother's Day observances in 1908, and on May 10 of that year a small gathering was held Ann's hometown of Grafton, West Virginia. In May of 1914, President Woodrow Wilson officially set aside the second Sunday in May as what is now known as Mother's Day; due to the growing attention that had spread throughout numerous cities and states in the U.S.. To many, this seemed as a wonderful notion; but to Anna, it seemed like her success had soon turned into failure. To her, this one special day was meant to just go home and simply spend time with your mother to show your appreciation for all she has done. It wasn't to celebrate ALL mothers, it was meant to celebrate the best mother you have ever known...which would be YOURS.
What had once seemed as a simple and intimate day, soon turned into one of the biggest commercial gold mines of the year. Next to Christmas and Valentine's Day, Mother's Day is known to have sold the most on gifts and cards alike. This did not sit well with Anna, and to show her displeasure she turned to boycotting , threatened with lawsuits, crash conventions or fund-raisers that had anything to do with Mother's Day, she even attacked First Lady Elanor Roosevelt for using Mother's Day for a fund-raiser. Anna continued these attempts to return Mother's Day to what it was originally meant to be, until the early 1940s. She died at the age of 84 in 1948 at the Philadelphia's Marshall Square Sanitarium.
Even though stores all over the country will bring out merchandise and cards for that special day, and it still reigns as number three in the marketing gold mine; we still find take the time out of our frantic crazy lives to give thanks and show our appreciation to the one woman who means the world to us. So, Anna Jarvis, you may have thought you failed, but to me your view on what Mother's Day is truly meant to be is being celebrated and cherished in far more ways than you can ever have imagined. In ten ways you believed to have failed...you succeeded ten times more than that.
| Anna Marie Jarvis |
