Mother's Day, The Ultimate Gift

As you shop for that perfect gift for mom this Mother's Day, keep in mind that the day, itself, started out as a gift from one tenacious woman to her mother.

Anna M. Jarvis was a devoted daughter who was concerned about the neglect shown to mothers by grown children. Her own mother, Ann Jarvis, had crusaded for a day in honor of all mothers, living and dead. When the elder Jarvis died in 1905, Anna began campaigning for a special observance for her mother and, by extension, all mothers. Finally, on May 12, 1907, a Mother's Day service was held at Jarvis' church in Philadelphia, Pa. A year later, on May 10, 1908, a larger service followed at Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church in Grafton, W.V., the very church where Ann Jarvis had taught Sunday school for 20 years. The church is now home to the International Mother's Day Shrine.

The celebrations gradually caught on in other churches and, by 1912, all of the states in the union had adopted Mother's Day proclamations. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson declared Mother's Day an annual national observance (there are no national holidays in the United States). Originally promoted as a day for Americans to display the flag in honor of mothers whose sons had died in The Great War (World War I), it has since grown to become one of the nation's most commercially successful holidays. Jarvis, herself, eventually soured on the commercialism of the holiday, decrying printed greeting cards as "a poor excuse for the letter you are too lazy to write."