A Mothers Day Story

How Mother's In the United States became a surprising Holiday!
Mother’s Day is celebrated on the second Sunday in May. It is a day to honor mothers and motherhood. The history of Mother’s Day is both interesting and inspiring. The idea of Mother’s Day was first conceived by Anna Jarvis in the early 1900s. Jarvis was a devoted daughter who wanted to find a way to honor her own mother. She started a campaign to make Mother’s Day a national holiday. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation declaring Mother’s Day a national holiday. Since then, Mother’s Day has been celebrated annually all over the world. On this special day, we honor the women who have given us life and have nurtured us with their love. We also celebrate motherhood and the important role that mothers play in our lives. In the United States, Mother’s Day is celebrated on the second Sunday in May. It is a day to honor mothers and motherhood.

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Heehas the Old Man routing from theKitchen Live podcast Today Yon Old Man ranting
from the Kitchen, I'm going totalk about Mother's Day and what a special
Sunday it is to be on theair with all of you. Today is
Mother's Day, and it's a specialtime for when we take a moment of

(00:22):
time to remind us of how wonderfulour moms have been throughout our lives.
Today, instead of ranting about politicsor carrying on about community subjects, I
wanted to just explore the history ofMother's Day and what it was all about.
So I jumped on the computer andwent to the big search engine in

(00:42):
the sky, Google and asked ita very important question, who started Mother's
Day? And here's what I foundout. I found out it was very
very interesting how it all got startedin Virginia. As history records it,
there was a lady by the nameof Anna jar who was actually the founder

(01:03):
or starring person of Mother's Day.And the way that it was all in
history shown to me was very veryinteresting. You see, there was an
Anna Rhesus Jarvis, who back inthe days of the Civil War era,
was very important woman as far aswhat she had accomplished in her life to

(01:25):
help community. You see, backthere, we had a terrible time with
tuberculosis and other diseases which swept acrossthe colonies. In our country. It
was families divided over political beliefs andhealth and well being of children. Coming
into this time period was a horriblyblack time in the history of our country.

(01:51):
The mortality rate of children dying wasabsolutely unbelievable, and even those who
were serving in the war, manyany of them lost their lives to tuberculosis,
which historians have now doclamented. Butin this period of time there was
a special woman will stand out inhistory. Her name was Anna Maurice Jarvis.

(02:15):
Missus Jarvis spent her life mobilizing mothersto take care of their children,
and she wanted mothers to be recognizedfor this. In fact, one of
the quotations that the historians have foundis quote, I hope and pray that
someone sometime will find a memorial Mother'sDay commemorating her for the matchless service that

(02:38):
she renders to humanity in every fieldof life. Missus Jarvis was very active
in the Methodist Church, where ineighteen fifty eight she ran a Mother's Day
work clubs to combat the high infancyrate and mortality rates, mostly due to
that disease that we had talked about. It was interesting because what she did

(03:00):
was is in these work clubs ofmothers, she taught sanitation, such things
that were so vilely important, likeboiling drinking water. And it was also
her continuous community leadership that helped theorganizers provide medicine supplies to sick families when

(03:23):
necessary. They would even work toquarantine these families and households and work with
them to prevent the spread of thisparticular disease. Now, Missus Jarvis herself
on a had thirteen children died inthe Civil War, and historians are pretty
sure that this was more likely tothe disease than the fighting itself. When

(03:46):
Missus Jarvis passed away in nineteen ohfive, she only had four children surviving,
and one of them was a griefstricken Anna, her daughter, who
promised to pulfeil her mother's dream.Though the approach to Memorial Day was quite
different, the historians have actually noted. You see, Missus Jarvis wanted to

(04:08):
celebrate the work that was done byher mother and to her. She was
very devoted to her mother and hermotto Mother's Day was for the best mothers
who ever lived your mother. AnnaJarvis believed in her heart that this was
a special time and it was whatshe had promised her mother that she would

(04:32):
succeed in doing. Three years aftermissus Jarvis's death, the first Mother's Day
was celebrated in Andrew's Methodist Church inVirginia. Anna Jarvis chose the second Sunday
of May simply because it was closeto the ninth of May, the day
her mother had passed away. Annahanded out hundreds of white carnations during the

(04:57):
service, her mother's favorite flower,to all the mothers who had attended.
Unfortunately, the huge success of whathad happened during that particular memorial had,
shall we say, added a commercialappeal to a particular holiday. Even though
Anna never wanted that day to becomecommercialized, it did very early, so

(05:23):
that the floral industry, the greetingcard industry, the candy industry deserved some
of the credit for today's promotion.But this was absolutely not what Anna wanted
whatsoever. And when the prices ofcarnations rocketed, Anna reached out and put
a press release condemning the floors,and it was a terrible time in her

(05:46):
life. She by nineteen twenty,was arguing and urging people not to buy
flowers at all. Mother's Day wasnever meant to be anything but a memorial
to mothers, not a commercialized dayfor everybody to profit. In fact,
it got so bad that Mother's Dayturned out to be debate into women's right

(06:10):
to vote. And the only oneto take advantage of Mother's Day had seen
was Anna herself. She refused moneyoffered by florist industries or any industry.
Historians say quote she never profited froma day, and she could easily have
done so. Many admired her forthat. Now. By this time,
Anna was living with her sister Lilian, who was visually impaired, and they

(06:35):
had actually survived on an inheritance fromtheir father and their brother Clyde, who
ran a taxicab business in Pennsylvania,before unfortunately, her brother died of heart
attack. Anna went on to spendevery bit of money to fight the commercialization
of Mother's Day. She campaigned,she donated, she sent up groups,

(07:00):
She did everything she could to stopthe Mother's Day commercialization. One of Anna's
final acts and I think It's probablyone of the bravest things you could ever
think of, was that while livingwith her sister, she was going door
to door in Pennsylvania asking for signaturesto back an appeal for Mother's Day to

(07:23):
be rescinded. Anna felt that onceagain there was no reason for this to
be a commercialized institution for those whowould use greed to make money for a
holiday that was to remember into lovemothers. You know. It was very
interesting also that Lilian soon died hersister of carbon dinoxide poisoning while trying to

(07:46):
light a stove up to heat aRundown house that they were living in.
The police claimed that there was iciclesactually hanging from the ceiling because it was
so cold in the house. Annaherself, God bless her, died of
heart failure in November of nineteen fortyeight, never seeing her accomplishment to stop

(08:09):
Mother's Day. I don't know whatAnna would have to say today if she
knew that there were five things thata lot of people really don't know about.
First of all, Mother's Day isn'talways on the same day each year,
and in the United States alone,there's more calls on Mother's Day than
any other day in the year.Mother's Day is the thirst highest selling holiday

(08:33):
for flowers, plants, and gifts, and the earliest Mother's Day celebration was
actually in Greece. Now this iskind of interesting because the Greek would have
spring celebrations in honor of Reva,the goddness of fatility, the motherhood and
generation, and of course the finalthing that a lot of people remember but

(08:56):
would never know the actual facts behindit, that Mother's Day is the busiest
day of the year for restaurants.According to the National Restaurant Association, in
twenty eighteen, there was eighty sevenmillion adults made plans to go to a
restaurant on Mother's Day. I oftenwonder how Anna would have felt at the
conclusion of her lifetime, all thatmoney that she gave away, all those

(09:20):
opportunities that she had because she believedthat Mother's Day was from mothers, to
honor mothers, to make mothers thespecial people that they were in the eyes
of America. And what did wedo. We capitalized it and made it
into well, as the podcast mentioned, one of the biggest days for the

(09:41):
florist in gift industry. To Anna, you are a hero and to all
those mothers out there that have donesuch a wonderful job, who have cared
for us, who have taken careof our children, who have made the
children of America stronger and better.All can say is God bless you,

(10:01):
and may all your days be fullof love.