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Mother's Day Founder Anna Jarvis
Anna Jarvis idolized her mother
and took her death in 1905 particularly hard. Anna's
mother had been both the
cornerstone of her family and an influential community
volunteer. When her mother died,
Anna wanted to commemorate her in some
meaningful way. Two years later,
Anna was allowed to hold a tribute to her mother at
their local church, and that small
service is commonly acknowledged as the first
Mother's Day celebration in the
United States (many other countries have set aside a
special day for mothers). From
that point on, Anna was obsessed with the idea of a
special annual commemorative day
for mothers. She wrote thousands of letters,
distributed brochures, spent tons
of money, and lobbied influential people until at last
�
seven years later in 1914 �
President Woodrow Wilson declared the second Sunday in
May as the official Mother's Day
holiday. But the story doesn't end there. Soon after
it was
established, the holiday began to
take on commercial overtones, with candy, cards, and
flowers promoted as appropriate
gifts. Anna had selected the white carnation � her
mother's favorite � as the
official Mother's Day flower and she was horrified and
angered in 1923 when she
discovered that carnations were being sold at a
Mother's Day
convention to raise money. She got
so upset, in fact, and raised such a ruckus that she
was arrested for disturbing the
peace. That same year she filed a lawsuit to stop a
Mother's Day festival. Anna had
never intended to establish May's biggest gift-giving
event. In her vision, Mother's Day
was a personal, loving event: "I wanted it to be a day
of
sentiment, not profit." Her
disgust and anger fueled the second major obsession of
her
life, the attempt to abolish the
commercialism of Mother's Day. Despite spending her
entire inheritance on the effort,
Anna was unsuccessful. The woman who gave us
Mother's Day and then tried to
take it away never married and never had children. She
was born on May 1, 1864.
===
"Do you have an opinion?
A mind of your own?"
-Garbage
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