Contributed by the Elbow Valley Residents Club
The Mother’s Day that we know now started in the early 1900s after a woman named Anna Jarvis campaigned for an official holiday. Jarvis began her campaign in 1905, and then hosted the first large scale Mother’s Day event in 1908 when she held a memorial for her own mother in West Virginia.
Jarvis continued to push for a new holiday. She accomplished her goal in 1914 when the President signed a proclamation to make Mother’s Day an official holiday, held on the second Sunday of May each year. Having set up this new holiday, Jarvis was quickly concerned about commercialization and by 1920, was fighting to prevent businesses from profiting off of the holiday, which she felt should be about celebrating personal connections and should not involve impersonal gifts, cards, and flowers. Her later campaign to stop commercialization has largely failed and shoppers now spend an average of $186 each year.
Although Mother’s Day has a commercial element, moms are still happy to receive less expensive options, with children creating cards, small sentimental gifts, and phone calls back home.
