SHREVEPORT, La. (KTAL/KMSS) – On Mother’s Day every year, people in more than 50 countries send presents to their mothers to thank them for giving birth, washing clothes and dishes, and cleaning the house, and making dinner. But the woman who made Mother’s Day a national and international holiday greatly regretted what the holiday turned into. She hated the holiday so much, in fact, that she tried to get Mother’s Day canceled.
To understand why Anna Jarvis wanted to cancel Mother’s Day we’ve got to go back to the beginning of Anna’s life, where we learn that Anna’s momma, Ann Maria Reeves Jarvis, was a social activist when it was common for women to be both social activists and a Sunday School teachers, too.
“Momma Ann,” as we’ll call her in this article, gave birth to 13 children but only four survived into adulthood. And during the mid-1800s, when Momma Ann was having babies (including Anne), infant and child mortality rates in Appalachia were high. Poor sanitation and poor hygiene, not to mention the lack of medical doctors, led to far too many deaths. So in 1858, when Momma Ann was pregnant again, the Sunday School teacher treated others the way she wanted to be treated and organized something called Mothers’ Day Work Clubs.
Momma Ann’s clubs educated families on how to prevent disease.
After she first organized Mothers’ Day Work Clubs, the Civil War erupted. Momma Ann found herself sandwiched between Virginians who were wholeheartedly for the Confederacy, and Virginians who were rooting for the Union.
That’s when Momma Ann’s activism went to a whole new level.
Momma Ann told the women in her Mothers’ Day Work Clubs to ignore political disputes and care for soldiers on both sides of the war. She also told women to remain neutral politically as they nurtured everyone.
After the Civil War ended, Momma Ann even organized a Mothers’ Friendship Day to help Civil War Union and Confederate veterans learn to reconcile their old differences and become friends again.
Battle Hymn of the Republic has ties to Mothers’ Day
Two years after Momma Ann organized Mothers’ Friendship Day, the women’s rights advocate and author of The Battle Hymn of the Republic (Julia Ward Howe) asked for the establishment of a “Mothers’ Day for Peace.”
Howe’s intended goal was to end war and celebrate peace.
On “Mothers’ Day for Peace” mothers were to ask government officials to stop sending husbands and sons to war.
The 1870 issuance of Howe’s “Mothers’ Day Proclamation” was celebrated for decades until the Spanish-American War fired up in 1898.
Here’s an excerpt of Howe’s Mothers’ Day proclamation:
“From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says, ‘Disarm, disarm! The sword is not the balance of justice.’ Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each learning after his own time, the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.”
Howe’s words became the definition of Mothers’ Day by the late 1800s.
Anne’s vow
Fast forward through time.
“I hope and pray that someone, sometime, will found a memorial mothers day commemorating her (mother) for the matchless service she renders to humanity in every field of life,” Momma Ann said in a prayer during the Sunday School she taught in 1876. Anna was only 12 years old at the time, but she never forgot her mother’s words.
When Momma Ann died in 1905, Anna vowed that “by the grace of God, you shall have that Mother’s Day.”
Anna began writing letters and making speeches on the subject, doing her best to generate support for a holiday that would honor all mothers for the role they play in helping humanity.
Anna became determined that Mother’s Day should be observed in May because that’s when Momma Ann died. And in 1914, Anna’s wish came true. President Woodrow Wilson made Mother’s Day a national holiday.
Anna deeply regrets creating Mother’s Day.
At the very least, Anna’s campaign to create Mother’s Day was an offshoot of the women’s rights movement. The first women’s rights convention in the United States had been held in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, only 16 years before Anna’s birth.
Those were the days of Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Solitude of Self, and Lucretia Mott’s conviction that led her “to adhere to the sufficiency of the light within us, resting on truth for authority, not on authority for truth.”
This new women’s movement was the culture of Momma Ann’s youth. And she became, in her lifetime, a strong leader amongst women of the Virginias.
After Mother’s Day became a national holiday, she was happy at first. It took a little while for Anna to realize that her mother had advocated for peace and better health care in Appalachia, but the holiday created in Momma Ann’s honor wasn’t celebrating Mothers’ Day in the ways that women like Ann and Julia Ward Howe had intended.
Instead, Mother’s Day became a money-making event.
“Mother’s Day” placed a strong emphasis on giving moms presents instead of presence, giving mom flowers instead of celebrating her abilities to stand up for what is good, fair, just, and peaceful.
Few people today realize there’s a difference between “Mothers’ Day” and “Mother’s Day.” But Anna dang sure knew the difference between the two
By the 1940s, three decades after Mother’s Day was declared a federal holiday, Anna was so disgusted with the commercialization of Mother’s Day that she lobbied for Mother’s Day to be removed from the national calendar. But it was too late. The holiday was making shopkeepers so much money that Anna had no chance of stopping what she started years before.
“The white carnation is the emblem of Mother’s day because it typifies the beauty, truth and fidelity of mother-love,” Anna stated in The (Sheveport) Times on Sun., May 11, 1924. “This emblem (the white carnation) is used on the Mother’s Day association printed matter and official buttons. But it does not mean that people should wear a white carnation. This false idea has led to florists flagrantly boosting the price of white carnations for the Mother’s Day trade.”
Ann further insisted that red carnations had no connection with Mother’s Day, “Yet florists have spread the idea that it should be worn for a mother who has passed away. This has boosted the sale of red carnations.”
She also rallied against confectioners who put a white ribbon on a candy box and drastically increased the price for Mother’s Day.
“There is no connection between candy and this day. It is pure commercialization,” she insisted in The (Shreveport) Times.
After Anna formally came out against the holiday, she was placed in a Sanitarium.
That’s where she died in 1948.
“Write a letter to your mother,” Anna begged of Americans before her death. “Any mother would rather have a line of the worst scribble from her son or daughter than any fancy greeting card or telegram.”
She also asked Americans to dedicate Mother’s Day to the spirit of goodwill, just like her mother had done during and after the Civil War.
And now you know why Anna Jarvis lobbied until Mothers‘ Day became a national holiday, then tried to cancel it.
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