Why does the creator of Mother’s day hate the day!
Perhaps you saw the Google Mother’s Day doodle, sent and received WhatsApp messages, read “best gift ideas for mom” lists, and posted on Instagram or Facebook to celebrate. Chances are, in all these Mother’s Day interactions, you have never heard the name ‘Anna Jarvis’.
Jarvis’ relationship with the day she founded was complex – although she had worked tirelessly to get “Mother’s Day” recognized, she eventually hated the commercialization of it and spent the last of her energy and money campaigning against it.
Find out who Anna Jarvis was, how she invented Mother’s Day, and why she was bitterly disappointed by the way it eventually evolved.
Jarvis was an activist who founded Mother’s Day to honor “all mothers” in 1908. She was born on May 1, 1864, and died on November 24, 1948.
During her childhood in West Virginia, Anna lived in turbulent times – the Civil War guns were booming, and several of her siblings died of diseases like measles and typhoid.
Throughout her life, Ann Reeves Jarvis contributed to causes related to motherhood, such as educating mothers about sanitation to prevent child mortality, and bridging rankling differences between women from both sides of the Civil War.
As a girl, Anna heard her mother say, “Someday, I hope and pray, someone will find a memorial mothers’ day to honor her for the unmatchable service she renders humanity in every field.”. I believe she deserves it.”
When Madame Jarvis passed away in 1905, Anna began to fulfill her mother’s wishes. She wrote letters to politicians, business people, and church leaders to celebrate her cause, suggesting that her second
Sunday in Maybe Mother’s Day and her mother’s favorite flower, the white
carnation. got support for the symbol. A Sunday off-day would have made her job easier. So she chose the second Sunday in May, and the date was close to May 9, when her mother died.
By 1908 Jarvis’s efforts had begun to bear fruit, and two Mother’s Day ceremonies and a larger one were held at Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church in her hometown of Grafton (the church is now the Mother’s Day International Temple). One in Philadelphia. The day’s popularity grew, and in 1914 James Heflin of Alabama introduced an official bill recognizing Mother’s Day in the House of Representatives. The bill hit the desk of then-US President Woodrow Wilson and was signed the same day May 8, 1914.
It wasn’t long before greeting card, flower, candy, and other industries aggressively adopted Anna Jarvis’ family’s version of Mother’s Day, and the holiday soon became highly commercialized. In 1964, the 50th anniversary of Mother’s Day, the New York Times reported that Mother’s Day had become the second-largest gift-giving holiday after Christmas.
Her next focus was on writing campaigns, litigation, and eventually direct action to stop the commercialization of her work. In the early years, the phrase “Second Sunday in May, Mother’s Day” was trademarked, and she sued those who used it for marketing purposes.
Jarvis’ original idea was modified, but the price of carnations skyrocketed around Mother’s Day, with white flowers given to departed mothers and red or pink ones given to living mothers. Jarvis sent out a scathing press release that said, according to the BBC, “WHAT WILL YOU DO to rid your streets of charlatans, pirates, racketeers, kidnappers, and other termites who would undermine one of the finest, noblest and most cherished celebrations? ” She then exhorted people to get rid of flowers completely.
In regard to greeting cards and candy, she said, “A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone else.”. Oh, and candy! When you take a box to Mother, you eat most of it yourself. What a great feeling.
Throughout the years, Jarvis’ opposition to those who used the day for anything other than what she intended it to be – “a day of sentiment, not profit” – grew more strident. According to National Geographic, “She organized boycotts… and attacked Eleanor Roosevelt for using Mother’s Day to raise funds for charities.” When a proposal was floated to rename Mother’s Day as *Parents’ Day*, she opposed it fiercely.
A convention of American War Mothers selling carnations for Mother’s Day in 1925 led to her arrest for “disturbing peace” when she crashed it. Two years earlier she had crashed a convention of retail confectioners as well.
Her response was to turn down the opportunity to share profits with the flower industry.
A nursing home, almost penniless, is where Jarvis died in 1948. In her final public act before entering a nursing home, she went door-to-door in Philadelphia to collect signatures in support of her mother.
edited and proofread by nikita sharma
