Mother’s Day is celebrated to honour motherhood and is observed in different parts of the world on different days/dates—but the most number of countries celebrate it on the 2nd Sunday of May.
Celebrations of motherhood can be traced back to the ancient Greeks and Romans, but the modern Mother’s Day began in the US in the early 1900s.
A woman named Anna Jarvis started a campaign for an official day honouring mothers in 1905, the year her mother died.
Anna’s mother was one of the peace activists promoting Mother’s Peace Day since the 1870s.
The promoters of Mother’s Peace Day (the 1870s) wanted to promote global unity after the horrors of the American Civil War and Europe’s Franco-Prussian War.
They wanted mothers of all nationalities to come together and promote the peaceful settlement of international issues.
Anna Jarvis wanted to honour the sacrifices made by the mothers.
After three years of her campaign, a Philadelphia department store owner financed her, and Anna Jarvis organised a public memorial for her mother in her hometown in 1908.
It was a huge success, and Anna Jarvis—who remained unmarried and childless her whole life—resolved to see Mother’s Day added to the national calendar.
But the US Congress rejected a proposal to make Mother’s Day an official holiday, joking that they would also have to proclaim a “Mother-in-law’s Day”.
Despite no official recognition, the popularity of the day continued to surge over the next few years—more and more states around the US started celebrating it.
In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation making Mother’s Day an official holiday, to take place the 2nd Sunday of May.
When Anna was lobbying to make this day an official holiday, she had teamed up with florists, recommending a white carnationLater, the custom developed of wearing a red or pink carnation to represent a living mother or a white carnation for a mother who was deceased. as the symbolic flower of Mother’s Day.
Soon, she realised florists, candy-makers and card-makers, and even charities were using Mother’s Day as a way to make extra money.
She was very upset with this commercialisation and spent the last few years of her life organising boycotts of the Mother’s Day celebrations.
She was once arrested for disturbing the peace when she misbehaved with vendors trying to sell carnations.
