Mother’s Day (United States)
On the second Sunday in May, Americans observe Mother’s Day as a yearly holiday. Mother’s Day honors mothers, motherhood, and maternal ties in general, in addition to their beneficial contributions to society and their families. Anna Jarvis founded it, and on May 10, 1908, a worship service was held at St. Andrew’s Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia, to commemorate the first Mother’s Day.
Common celebrations include exchanging holiday cards and gifts, attending church and frequently receiving carnations, and having family dinners. Mother’s Day in the US is a nice addition to other family-oriented holidays like Father’s Day, Siblings Day, and Grandparents Day.
Many Mother’s Day celebrations around the world have diverse beginnings and customs, some of which have been impacted by this more contemporary American custom. See Mother’s Day for information on the .global holiday
Women’s peace organizations in the US attempted to create regular events and holidays in support of nonviolence and peace during the 1800s. Meetings of mothers whose sons had served or perished on opposing sides of the American Civil War were a typical early pastime.
The goal of “Mother’s Friendship Day,” which was instituted in 1868 by Ann Jarvis, Anna Jarvis’s mother, was “to reunite families that had been divided during the Civil War.” Ann Jarvis hoped to turn her earlier Mother’s Day Work Clubs—which she had started to enhance health and cleanliness for both Union and Confederate encampments experiencing a typhoid outbreak—into an annual commemoration for mothers. However, she passed away in 1905 before the celebration was set in place.[4][5] Her daughter would carry on her mother’s work, having become virtually infatuated with her.
The 1870s and 1880s saw a few infrequent observances. None of them, however, were able to resonate beyond a local level.[4] At the time, American Protestant schools observed a number of holidays and special days, including Children’s Day, Temperance Sunday, Roll Call Day, Decision Day, and Missionary Day..
On June 2, 1872, in New York City, Julia Ward Howe organized an anti-war “Mother’s Day for Peace” and issued a “Appeal to womanhood throughout the world” (nowadays known as the Mother’s Day Proclamation). Under Howe’s support, the observance persisted in Boston for around ten years before going extinct.
Mothers everywhere would work toward world peace during these ceremonies.
A Mother’s Day ceremony was conducted in Albion, Michigan on May 13, 1877, following a dispute pertaining to the temperance movement. This occurred some years later. Legend has it that Juliet Calhoun Blakeley, a pioneer from Albion, interrupted the Rev. Myron Daughterty’s sermon to finish it. Daughterty was upset because his son and two other temperance advocates had been forced to spend the night in a saloon at gunpoint by an anti-temperance group, which resulted in public intoxication.
Blakeley invited other mothers to join her from the pulpit. Blakeley’s two sons, who were also traveling salespeo
were so touched by her that they promised to honor her every year and started a campaign to get their business associates to do the same. The Methodist Episcopal Church in Albion designated the second Sunday in May as a special day to honor mothers at their insistence in the early 1880s.
In 1904, Frank E. Hering, the president of the Fraternal Order of Eagles and an alumnus of Notre Dame University, appealed for “setting aside one day in the year as a nationwide memorial to the memories of Mothers and motherhood.”Hering became a prominent supporter of a national Mother’s Day for the next ten years after witnessing a class of Notre Dame students sending penny postcards home to their mothers.[As Hering said in a 1941 Scholastic article: “Great men throughout history have attributed their accomplishments to their moms. This is acknowledged by the Holy Church, Notre Dame in particular, and Our Lady, who guards our esteemed organization.”
Mother’s Day Historical Marker was established at Market and N. Juniper Streets in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The Mother’s Day Proclamation issued by President Wilson on May 9, 1914
After her mother, Ann Jarvis, passed away on May 9, 1905, Anna Jarvis created Mother’s Day in its current shape with the assistance of Philadelphia merchant John Wanamaker. Jarvis consistently asserted that she was the sole creator of Mother’s Day and never once referenced Howe or Mothering Sunday, nor did she ever allude to any relationship with the Protestant school celebrations.
On May 12, 1907, a brief service was performed at the Grafton, West Virginia, Andrew’s Methodist Episcopal Church, where Anna’s mother had been a Sunday school teacher. On May 10, 1908, the same church hosted the first “official” worship session. This was followed by a larger celebration held in the Wanamaker Auditorium of the Wanamaker’s store in Philadelphia. It was said that many people in New York commemorated the day the following year.
Subsequently, Jarvis spearheaded an effort to make Mother’s Day a national holiday in the United States, followed by one worldwide. West Virginia was the first state to formally establish the holiday in 1910, and other states swiftly followed.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution on May 10, 1913, requesting that all federal government officials, including the president, wear white carnations on Mother’s Day. The United States Congress established a statute on May 8, 1914, declaring the second Sunday in May to be Mother’s Day and seeking a proclamation. President Woodrow Wilson proclamated the first national Mother’s Day the following day, asking people to fly the flag in remembrance of mothers whose sons had perished in combat. President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized a stamp honoring the occasion in 1934.
The House of Representatives had two votes in May 2008 over a resolution honoring Mother’s Day. The first vote was carried out with 21 members abstaining. The original event took place at the Saint Andrews Methodist Church, which is now a National Historic Landmark and home to the International Mother’s Day Shrine.
The Mother’s Day International Association was founded in 1912 by Anna Jarvis, who also registered the terms “Mother’s Day” and “Second Sunday in May” as trademarks. She pointed out that “Mother’s” ought to “be a singular possessive, for each family to honor its own mother, not a plural possessive commemorating all mothers in the world.” Additionally, this spelling is what the Congress used in pertinent bills, President Woodrow Wilson used in his 1914 proclamation, and other presidents have used in their Mother’s Day proclamations.
Northern Pacific Railway Mother’s Day postcard, 1915
Mother’s Day customs include attending to church, giving out carnations, and having family feasts. The third-most popular holiday in the US for card-giving is Mother’s Day. Over half of American homes are thought to send greeting cards on this particular holiday, according to the greeting card business. Some have criticized the event for becoming a Hallmark holiday because it has been excessively commercialized by businesses and advertisements.
Since Anna Jarvis brought 500 carnations to the inaugural Mother’s Day celebration in 1908, the flower has come to symbolize the occasion giving out carnations became a ritual in many religious services This also gave rise to the Mother’s Day tradition of donning a carnation. The carnation was the founder Anna Jarvis’s mother’s favorite flower, so she went with it. Florists came up with the idea of wearing a pink carnation if your mother was still alive or a white one if she had passed away. This was heavily promoted until it became a common practice at churches, partly as a result of the scarcity of white carnations and partly as a result of efforts to increase sales of other types of flowers on Mother’s Day. Another unconventional flower
American holidays were first commercialized very early on. Nine years after the first Mother’s Day was officially observed, the holiday had spread so widely that Anna Jarvis, who spent her whole inheritance and the rest of her life opposing what she perceived as the celebration’s abuse, became a well-known opponent of what it had become. Buying greeting cards, in her opinion, is a sign that one is too indolent to send a personal message, thus she denounced the practice. When Mother’s Day became commercialized, she was jailed in 1948 for disturbing the peace. After being released from jail, she declared that she “…wished she would have never started the day because it became so out of control…” Later in the year, she passed away.
As the most popular day of the year to eat out, Mother’s Day has become one of the most commercially successful American holidays. Custom gifts, such as mother’s rings, account for a large amount of the annual revenue generated by the jewelry sector in the United States. Approximately $2.6 billion is spent by Americans on flowers, $1.53 billion on indulgent presents such as spa treatments, and $68 million on greeting cards.
It has been proposed that the holiday’s survival has been guaranteed by commercialization. Conversely, some of the same-year holidays, such Temperance Sunday and Children’s Day, are no longer observed.
Mother’s Day weekend saw the Southern 500 auto race at Darlington Raceway take place on Saturdays from 2005 to 2013. The Digital Ally 400 was held during Mother’s Day weekend at Kansas Speedway by the NASCAR Cup Series from 2014 to 2019. The 2020 Martinsville Speedway Blue-Emu Maximum Pain Relief 500 was originally slated for the Saturday of Mother’s Day weekend (but it was rescheduled for June). The NASCAR throwback race, the Goodyear 400 auto race at Darlington Raceway, took place on Mother’s Day in 2021. Additionally, since 2014, the IndyCar Grand Prix has taken place on the Saturday of Mother’s Day weekend.
With the exception of 2011 and 2014, when May 1 fell on a Sunday, The Players Championship men’s golf tournament was held on Mother’s Day weekend from 2007 to 2018. In some instances, it happened the next weekend. From 2004 to 2009, the Kingsmill Championship women’s golf event was place over Mother’s Day weekend
On Mother’s Day weekend, professional athletes frequently accessorize their outfits with pink items.
