Anna Jarvis, the founder of Mother’s Day, has dedicated her life to disbanding the day she spent six years campaigning Congress for.
Jarvis wouldn't have wanted you to buy those flowers for your mom, or that card, or those chocolates. In all likelihood, she wouldn't have wanted you to celebrate the holiday at all.
Jarvis’ original intention was that Mother’s Day would be a day to honour the sacrifices women made for their families.
The American woman who single-handedly worked to make Mother’s Day a national holiday was reportedly so disgusted to hear that a department store was having a Mother’s Day sale that she threw her lunch on the floor.
The fact that the US will collectively spend nearly $20 bn on moms this year probably would have caused the founder of Mother's Day to throw her lunch on the floor like she reportedly did in the early 1900s, when she found out that a department store in Philadelphia was offering a Mother's Day special, according to Mental Floss.
Jarvis, a West Virginia woman who didn't even have children of her own came up with the idea for a Mother's Day holiday, organizing the first celebration at a Methodist church in 1908, says a report by The Huffington Post.
Annoyed that most American holidays were dedicated to honouring male achievements, Jarvis started a letter-writing campaign to make it a national holiday, involving wearing a white carnation, visiting your mother and maybe going to church.
Her campaign worked, however not in the way she had hoped. She never wanted Mother's Day to be the commercial holiday it quickly came to be. Although maybe she should have thought twice about getting financing for the first celebration from the owner of Wanamaker's, a major department store at the time.
Soon after Congress made Mother's Day an official holiday in 1914, Jarvis was actively campaigning against it, leveling harsh criticism against florists, candy makers, greeting-card companies and anyone else looking to make a buck off the holiday.
A 1924 story published in the Miami Daily News and Metropolis detailed Jarvis's distaste for what Mother's Day had become. It pretty much comes down to this.
