Mother's Day

Mother's Day is one of the most important holidays in America, and not just because we love our moms. Billions of dollars in flowers, greeting cards, and restaurant brunches make Mother's Day an economic powerhouse. But it wasn't always this way, and when it transformed rom a day of remembrance to a commercial industry, its founder tried to have it abolished. This week, we're talking about Anna Jarvis and the holiday she made.

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Transcript

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We here at Five Minute Trivia are big fans of all the moms in our lives, and we love Mother's Day. Depending on when you're listening to this, we hope all you moms out there are having or have had a great Mother's Day. But Mother's Day wasn't always about flowers, cards, and kids accidentally setting the kitchen on fire. In fact, Mother's Day evolved so much from its original intent that the founder of Mother's Day would later try to have it abolished. On today's show, we're talking all about this fascinating holiday and its legacy. We choose to go to the mole. The rum tugum is a curious cat. Hundred billion other galaxies. In 1908, a woman named Anna Jarvis held a special worship service at Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church in West Virginia. It was the church where her own mother taught Sunday school and the worship ceremony was held to honor the work of mothers like her own. She chose white carnations as an emblem and asked people to write letters of gratitude to their mothers. Prior to her death, Jarvis' mother had long advocated for the role of mothers in society. Her name was Anne Jarvis, not to be confused with her daughter Anna. Thirty years before she died, Anne Jarvis established a mother's friendship day to reunite families that had been divided during the Civil War. During the war she organized mothers to improve sanitation for soldiers during a typhoid outbreak. When Anna Jarvis, the daughter, wanted to honor her mother, she reached out to department store magnate John Wanamaker. Wanamaker's was the biggest department store chain in the Philadelphia area. Now, Philadelphia calls itself the city of brotherly love, but it probably should change that to the city of motherly love. See, Anna Jarvis may have held that memorial ceremony in West Virginia, but she wasn't there because she and her mother had actually relocated to Philadelphia after her father passed away six years earlier. John Wanamaker was hugely receptive to the idea of honoring mothers. He had lots of reasons, but a big one was that most of his customers were women. So starting in May 1908 and for the next eleven years, Jarvis and Wanamaker teamed up to hold a Mother's Day celebration in the Egyptian hall of the Wanamaker Building. Wanamaker gave out free carnations to everyone who attended. Today, at Market and Juniper Streets in Center City, Philadelphia, there's a commemorative plaque. But Anna Jarvis wasn't done. She relentlessly campaigned to make it a national holiday. West Virginia first declared Mother's Day an official state holiday in nineteen ten. In nineteen thirteen, the US House of Representatives passed a resolution calling on all federal officials, including the president, to wear a white carnation on the second Sunday in May. In nineteen fourteen, Congress and President Woodrow Wilson made it official. Now, President Wilson issued a proclamation declaring Mother's Day as a day for American citizens to display the flag in honor of mothers whose sons had died in war. But it very quickly turned into something else. Mother's Day became a whole industry for flowers, candy, and most upsetting of all to Anna Jarvis, greeting cards. Now, pre-made Christmas greeting cards had been around since at least the eighteen forties, but Anna Jarvis had envisioned Mother's Day as something more personal and heartfelt. When Hallmark unveiled the first Mother's Day card in the 1920s, it's safe to say that Jarvis lost it. She hated the idea of preprinted impersonal cards. She hated florists, raising the price of carnations every May. She hated people using the name Mother's Day for their own commercial purposes and spent nearly all of her money suing people who did. In 1925, Anna Jarvis was arrested for disturbing the peace when she crashed a convention by a group called the American War Mothers because they were fundraising and selling carnations on Mother's Day. She went on to attack First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt for suggesting that people donate to charity on Mother's Day. By the 1940s, she was actively lobbying the government to abolish the holiday. Jarvis was eventually committed to a sanitarium, broke and homeless, where she would live until she died in 1848. In a somewhat ironic twist of fate, the people who paid her bills were florists and greeting card manufacturers. So how successful was Anna Jarvis at decommercializing Mother's Day? Not at all. It's the most popular day of the year to eat at a restaurant. It's the third most popular day to buy a card after Christmas and Valentine's Day. Every year, Americans spend about$2.6 billion on flowers. In his book called Consumer Right, the Buying and Selling of American Holidays, Eric Schmidt suggests that all of the consumerism around Mother's Day is what has kept it around. There were other remembrance holidays like Children's Day and Temperance Sunday that just withered away without an industry to support them. So thank you, Mom, thank you, Anna Jarvis, and thank you. Good old American Capitalism. That's our show this week. Join us next time, and thanks for listening.