Anna Jarvis
Mother's Day 2010

I’m sure my beloved mother, Anne Reeves Jarvis would be rolling ROLLING OVER IN HER GRAVE if she knew that the Mothers Day that is celebrated in Canada, Mexico, South America, China, Japan, Africa, Europe and the States had become so commercialized. In fact I’M rolling over in my grave now.

Mother's Day has nothing to do with candy. Candy is junk. You give your mother a box of candy and then go home and eat most of it yourself, or else you give her hard candy that breaks her teeth or dentures.

Flowers are about half-dead by the time they are delivered. It's really a shame to waste flowers for Mother's Day. Florists have made millions of dollars out of my idea and they don't deserve it.

I was born in 1864 in Appalachia. Prior to the Civil War, my mother organized what she called, "Mothers Day Work Clubs". These women did charitable work in their communities-- like providing medicine for the poor, milk inspections and for sanitary instructions to families in which the mothers had TB. The ladies provided professional nursing services for sick soldiers, who were mostly suffering from typhoid fever. It was a greatly needed service at that time. My dear mother was instrumental in SAVING THOUSANDS OF LIVES.

My mother was my Sunday School teacher and one day as a service on the 'Mothers of the Bible', she said, "I hope someone, sometime establishes a special day as a memorial to our mothers".

I never forgot my mothers wish. After she died in 1905 I began to pursue diligently the establishment of a Mothers Day, in memory of her. I wanted to honor my mother’s EVANGELICAL PIETY. I wanted to honor her commitment to home and family. Domestic responsibilities were her every day religion. Caring for children, nursing them in illness, looking after her husband and attending him in old age were her sacred duties.

I WAS saddened that my mother’s hopes to have a college education had been thwarted by home responsibilities. Her own pleasure and ambitions had been restrained by the ties of motherhood. The irony that Mother’s Day would honor the very institutions that held my mother back never really hit me until now.

My idea of a Mother’s Day followed from many other Evangelical Protestant ‘Days’ such as Children’s Day, Temperance Sunday and Missionary Day. Mother’s Day was to be a celebration of the CHRISTIAN HOME AND FAMILY. Specifically I wanted to memorialize the memory of my dead mother and of all departed mothers.

My CENTRAL MISSION really was to emphasize THE MORAL UPLIFT of the home and to stress the abiding rituals of EVANGELICAL Protestantism. The home centered religious world of women vs the COMMERCIAL SELF-AGGRANDIZING WORLD OF MEN. Mother’s Day was to be a HOLY DAY, A DIVINE GIFT. White carnations would represent MATERNAL PURITY, FAITHFULNESS AND LOVE.

I worked unceasingly at this task of promoting the day, holding meetings, talking to every available, influential person. I incorporated myself and started a Mother’s Day committee and wrote letters by the HUNDREDS and travelled extensively around the country. Finally the first official Mother's Day service was held in my mothers own church in West Virginia. On that special day I sent 500 white carnations, my mother’s favorite flower, to the church. A flower was to be worn by each person attending the service. I gave up my job -- as a job writing copy for an insurance office -- to work full-time writing letters to politicians, clergy members, business leaders, women's clubs and anyone else I thought might have some influence in creating an official Mother’s Day. I originally cooperated with the US Florists Association, merchants and a wealthy department store magnate to get the word out and have the idea promoted.

By 1909 Mother's Day services were held in 46 states plus Canada and Mexico

I was able to enlist the World's Sunday School Association in the lobbying campaign, a key success factor in convincing legislators in states and in the U.S. Congress to support the holiday .

In 1912 West Virginia became the first state to adopt an official Mother's Day. Several prohibitionist in Congress introduced the resolution that in 1914 established by Presidential Proclamation, Mother's Day the second Sunday of May.

However, I had became increasingly concerned over the commercialization of Mother's Day by the merchants. I wanted it to be a day of sentiment, not profit. I eventually grew to oppose the selling of flowers all together and also of the use of commercial greeting cards--a poor excuse for the letter you are too lazy to write.

The Florist Association had been using the image of me and my dead mother to promote the selling of flowers. Due to a shortage of white carnations, they came up with the idea of using red carnations to honor the living mothers, and white for the dead.

I was forced to respond, and attack the CHARLATANS, BANDITS, PIRATES, RACKATEERS, KIDNAPPERS and others who would undermine with their greed, one of the finest, noblest, truest movements and celebrations known.

Hoping to settle the floral question for all time, I proposed substituting celluloid buttons for the carnations and urged people to stop buying flowers and gifts. In 1931, I even criticized Eleanor Roosevelt for her work with a Mother's Day committee that was not the committee I had formed.

Some have argued that MY concerns were not so much the CORROSIVE, HOLLOWING AND PROFANING effects of commercialism, but instead with the power that others were claiming over the holiday at MY expense. Hogwash. I DID want everyone interested in organizing Mother’s Day to come through ME and my committee. But this was only to save it from corruption. Mother’s day was to be a sober and solemn occasion centered on CHURCH AND HOME, faithful to my mother’s own sacrifice and avowed TEMPERANCE.

I filed suit against New York Governor Al Smith, for holding a Mother's Day celebration with LIQUOR. When a court threw the suit out, I began a public protest and was arrested for disturbing the peace.

My near TOTAL dedication to this cause was made possible because I myself never married or had children and had no maternal or domestic obligations. Perhaps another irony. So even though I was the founder of Mother's Day, I myself was never a mother. I remained unmarried and I lived a rather lonely life.

I was blind, deaf, and destitute when I died in 1948 at age 84. I died without knowing that the nation’s florists had footed the bills for the final months of my life spent in a rest home.

I do not regret living my values, and fighting for what I believed in. I can only say that I hope that I have been a role model for others. I also have come to realize that we all may not take on the same issues, or indeed even take the same stance on them. But I believe that we can respectfully disagree with kindness and love, and honor others in doing so, as was my Mother’s example was her true gift