By Pete Gawda
The idea for Mother’s Day began just after the Civil War. According to History Cooperative, in the years following the Civil War a woman named Ann Reeves Jarvis organized mothers’ workday clubs. Her goal was to foster reconciliation between the North and the South and to promote issues of interest to mothers, such as public health and the welfare of children.
Jarvis taught a Sunday school class at a Methodist church in Grafton, West Virginia. When her daughter, Anna, was 12, she heard her mother teach a Sunday school lesson from the Bible about mothers. Jarvis expressed a desire that someone would create a memorial holiday honoring mothers for their service to humanity. The National Woman’s History Alliance quotes Jarvis as saying, “There are many days for men, but none for mothers.”
After her mother’s death in 1905, Britannica.com states that Anna Jarvis championed her mother’s cause with a public speaking and letter writing campaign. She envisioned a holiday on the second Sunday in May, the day her mother died. The first Mother’s Day church service was held May 12, 1908, in the church where Ann Jarvis taught Sunday School. At the time, Anna Jarvis also started the tradition of wearing red or white carnations on Mother’s Day — a white carnation was in memory of a deceased mother and the red carnation represented a living mother.
Anna Jarvis also envisioned a personal day with handwritten notes for mothers, which is the reason Mother’s Day is singular. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed Mother’s Day a national holiday to be celebrated on the second Sunday in May.
The idea of a simple, quiet holiday characterized by handwritten notes and family celebrations soon became too commercialized for Anna Jarvis. According to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, Anna Jarvis wanted Mother’s Day to be a “holy day,” but she thought it became a crass holiday benefiting greeting-card publishers and florists more than honoring mothers. In 1943, she started a petition to do away with Mother’s Day. Anna Jarvis died penniless five years later in a sanitarium where, ironically, her bills were paid by the same greeting-card publishers and florists she scorned.
Other Mother’s Day origins
Julia Ward Howe, the author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” is also associated with Mother’s Day. According to mothersdaycelebration.com, Howe suggested a Mother’s Day dedicated to peace. She issued a Mother’s Day proclamation in 1870 to promote peace and instituted a Mothers’ Peace Day, which was held on the second Sunday in June. However, Mothers’ Peace Day was observed only for a few years.
At least one source suggests another origin for Mother’s Day. An article in the 2026 Old Farmer’s Almanac states that in 1887 Mary Towles Sasseen, a teacher in Henderson, Kentucky, led her class in what some called the first Mother’s Day celebration. Later she published a pamphlet explaining her vision for a holiday honoring mothers and traveled to primarily public schools to promote her idea. Sasseen suggested April 20, her mother’s birthday, as the date. Schools in several states adopted the idea.
Sasseen died in 1906 before her dream of a national holiday became a reality. In 1926, the Kentucky Legislature passed a resolution honoring Sasseen as “the originator of the idea of a celebration of Mother’s Day.” The article, however, also stated that primary credit for the creation of Mother’s Day is generally attributed to Ann Jarvis, Anna Jarvis and Julia Ward Howe.
While many countries, including the U.S., Australia, Canada and parts of Europe, observe Mother’s Day on the second Sunday of May, many others honor mothers on different dates based on local traditions and cultures. The celebration of Mother’s Day is an international day of recognition.
