One of the best parts of writing this newsletter is coming up with topics that I hope will interest you and then researching those topics to, perhaps, give you a new perspective or some new insight into that topic. As an added bonus I end up learning quite a bit about the topics I choose as well! Since it's May I thought an interesting topic would be how Mother's Day came to be in the United States.
Mother's Day was actually first suggested way back in 1872 by Julia Ward Howe (the name may not ring a bell, she's famous for writing the words to "The Battle Hymn of the Republic") but ironically it was a woman who was never a mother herself who is credited for leading the campaign for national recognition of Mother's Day.
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In 1907, Anna Jarvis held a ceremony in Grafton, West Virginia honoring her mother who had passed away two years earlier. Her mother, also named Anna, had tried toestablish "Mother's Friendship Days" as a means for women to deal with the aftermath of the Civil War. The younger Anna came up with the idea of having a national holiday to honor all Mothers. She credited her inspiration to a Sunday school lesson her mother once gave during which she said "I hope and pray that someone, sometime, will found a memorial mother's day. There are many days for men, but none for mothers." So with her supporters help, Jarvis began writing to ministers, politicians, businessmen, and anyone else they thought could help their cause and they were quite successful.
West Virginia became the first state to officially recognize the new holiday in 1910, the entire nation followed suit in 1914 when President Wilson declared the second Sunday of May to be Mother's Day. Jarvis chose white carnations as the
"Arrangement in Grey and Black" otherwise known as "Whistler's Mother".
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official flower of Mother's Day because they represent sweetness, purity and the endurance of a mother's love.
In another ironic twist, Jarvis became increasingly bitter about the commercialization of the holiday, so much so that she filed a lawsuit to stop the event in 1923 and she was actually arrested for disturbing the peace at a mother's convention where white carnations were being sold! On a sad note, Anna Jarvis died in 1948 having never married and childless.
Despite Jarvis's apprehension, Mother's Day has flourished in the United States. The second Sunday of May has become the most popular day of the year to dine out and telephone traffic peaks on that day as sons and daughters everywhere take advantage of the day to express their appreciation for their mothers!
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