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A Timeline
Ancient
Greek spring festivals honored Rhea, mother of the gods.
Present
Mother's Day is celebrated in more than 50 countries, each with unique traditions.
1908
Anna Jarvis holds memorial for her mother in West Virginia, beginning the modern Mother's Day movement.
1911
Mother's Day celebrated in almost every US state, plus Mexico, Canada, China, Japan, and Africa.
1914
President Woodrow Wilson signs proclamation establishing second Sunday in May as Mother's Day.
1920
Anna Jarvis begins protesting the commercialization she never intended, trademarking 'Mother's Day.'
1923
Jarvis threatens lawsuits against greeting card companies, calling them 'charlatans, bandits, pirates.'
1930s
Jarvis campaigns for removal of Mother's Day from the calendar, disgusted by commercialism.
1948
Anna Jarvis dies penniless, having spent her inheritance fighting the holiday she created.
16th century
England's Mothering Sunday allowed workers to return to their 'mother church' and families.
1870
Julia Ward Howe proposes 'Mother's Day for Peace' after Civil War and Franco-Prussian War.
1872
Howe's Mother's Day proclamation calls on mothers to unite for peace worldwide.
1907
Anna Jarvis's mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, dies. Anna vows to honor her wish for such a day.
1912
Anna Jarvis trademarks 'Mother's Day' with singular possessive—for each family to honor its mother.
Anna Jarvis's Complicated Legacy
Anna Jarvis created Mother's Day to honor her own mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, a peace activist who had organized 'Mother's Day Work Clubs' to improve sanitary conditions and reduce infant mortality.
Anna fought for years to establish the holiday, succeeding in 1914. But she trademarked it with a singular possessive—Mother's Day, not Mothers' Day—because she intended it to be a day for each family to honor its own mother, not a collective celebration.
As greeting card companies, florists, and candy makers commercialized the holiday, Anna grew increasingly bitter. She organized boycotts, threatened lawsuits, and was even arrested for disturbing the peace at a convention of war mothers selling carnations.
She died in 1948, blind, poor, and heartbroken—paying her nursing home bills with money raised by people in the floral and greeting card industries she had fought against.
Perhaps the truest way to honor her vision is to set aside the cards and flowers, and simply be present with the mothers in our lives.