Mothers day ideas - The Mother of Mother’s Day

Mothers day ideas - The
Mother of Mother’s Day
A history of the Mother of Mother's Day
www.CreativeYouthIdeas.com
www.CreativeHolidayIdeas.com

Attributed to Paul Harvey?
Anna May Jarvis, quote: “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….”

Anna May Jarvis, quote:
“A maudlin, insincere printed card or a ready-made telegram
means nothing except that you’re too lazy to write to the woman
who has done more for you than anyone else in the world. You
ought to go home and see your mother on Mother’s Day. You
ought to take her out and paint the town red….”

Anna May Jarvis, still quoting now:
“You ought to give her something useful, something permanent. A
lot of mothers are sleeping on mattresses that are as hard as rocks.
Maybe she needs new eyeglasses, comfortable shoes, a pair of
slippers, or better lighting fixtures. Is she sleeping warm at night?
Could she use an eiderdown? Maybe the stairs in her home need
fixing. . . .”

What about flowers, Anna May?
“Flowers are about half dead by the time they’re delivered.”
And Anna May goes on to say that she won’t rest “until
Mother’s Day becomes the personal family Memorial Day it
was intended to be.”

If anyone had the right to speak out against the commercialization of
Mother’s Day, it was Anna May Jarvis. That second Sunday of
thoughtfulness each and every May was Anna’s idea in the first
place. Anna May Jarvis was the Mother of Mother’s Day. Anna May
Jarvis, born May 1, 1864.

She was a minister’s daughter, described as a quiet, studious girl in
school who liked everyone and whom everyone liked. Anna was just
two weeks forty-two, working for a life insurance company in
Philadelphia, when her mother died on the second Sunday of May,
1906. Friends noticed a change in Anna in the months following that
unhappy occasion. No longer the gentle, easygoing woman they
knew, Anna became obsessed with but one desire: to see her
mother and motherhood honored annually throughout the world.

After more than a year of careful planning, Anna arranged the first
Mother’s Day church service-May 10, 1908-at St. Andrew’s Methodist
Church in Grafton, West Virginia, where Anna’s mother had taught Sunday
school. Anna worked hard to promote her idea. A year after that first
memorial service in West Virginia, Philadelphia became the first city to
proclaim an official Mother’s Day. Three years passed. West Virginia made
Mother’s Day a statewide observance. One year later, in 1914, President
Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation from Congress-a document
recorded as Public Resolution 25-to establish the second Sunday in May as
Mother’s Day forevermore.

And it had all begun with Anna. But Anna, now fifty years old, was not
content with her victory. She retired from her job at the insurance
company to spend her remaining thirty-four years, and her entire
fortune of over a hundred thousand dollars, campaigning against the
commercialization of the day she had founded in honor of motherhood.
She interrupted florists’ conventions to express her remorse at their
“profiteering”; wherever there was a forum for her cause, she spoke
out. Then one day, when she was too old and too tired to speak out, she
was placed penniless, deaf and blind in a West Chester, Pennsylvania,
sanitarium. She died there in November of 1948; she was eightyfour.

And if the story of the woman who invented Mother’s Day is made
even more poignant, it is by the fact that she, Anna, would never
benefit from that time of remembrance. For Anna May Jarvis-the
Mother of Mother’s Day, who devoted her life and her fortune to its
reverent observance-was never married and was never a mother.

Holiday Collection
Games and Activities in Celebration
of common Holidays.
Creative Holiday Ideas has over 300 pages of
ideas to help you plan your next New Year’s
Day, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s
Day, Halloween or Fall Festival, and
Thanksgiving event. If you’ve ever wondered
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and how you’re going to do it, this resource is
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Mothers day ideas - The Mother of Mother’s Day

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