Anna Jarvis: The Woman Who Regretted Creating Mother’s Day

The woman responsible for the creation of Mother’s Day, marked in many countries on the second Sunday in May, would have approved of the modest celebrations likely to take place this year. The commercialisation of the day horrified her – to the extent that she even campaigned to have it rescinded. When Elizabeth Burr received a phone call a few days ago from someone asking about her family history, she initially thought she had been scammed. “I thought, ‘OK, my identity has been stolen, I’ll never see my money again,'” she says. In fact the call came from a family history researcher looking for living relatives of Anna Jarvis, the woman who founded Mother’s Day in the US over a century ago. Anna Jarvis was one of 13 children, only four of whom lived to adulthood. Her older brother was the only one to have children of his own, but many died young from tuberculosis and his last direct descendant died in the 1980s. So Elisabeth Zetland of MyHeritage decided to look for first cousins, and that was what led her to Elizabeth Burr. When Elizabeth had been reassured that her savings were safe, she gave MyHeritage the surprising news that her father and aunts hadn’t celebrated Mother’s Day when they were growing up – out of respect for Anna, and her feeling that her idea had been hijacked by commercial interests and debased. Anna Jarvis’s campaign for a special day to celebrate mothers was one she inherited from her own mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis. Mrs Jarvis had spent her life mobilising mothers to care for their children, says historian Katharine Antolini, and she wanted mothers’ work to be recognised. “I hope and pray that someone, sometime, will found a memorial mothers’ day commemorating her for the matchless service she renders to humanity in every field of life. She is entitled to it,” Mrs Jarvis said. She was very active in the Methodist Episcopal Church, where, from 1858, she ran Mothers’ Day Work Clubs to combat high infant and child mortality rates, mostly due to diseases that ravaged their community in Grafton, West Virginia. In the work clubs mothers learned about hygiene and sanitation, such as the vital importance of boiling drinking water. The organisers provided medicine and supplies to sick families and, when necessary, quarantined entire households to prevent epidemics. Mrs Jarvis herself lost nine children, including five during the American Civil War (1861-1865) who most likely succumbed to disease, says Antolini, a professor at West Virginia Wesleyan College. When Mrs Jarvis died in 1905, surrounded by her four surviving children, a grief-stricken Anna promised to fulfil her mother’s dream, though her approach to the memorial day was quite different, Antolini says. Whereas Mrs Jarvis wanted to celebrate the work done by mothers to improve the lives of others, Anna’s perspective was that of a devoted daughter. Her motto for Mother’s Day was “For the Best Mother who Ever Lived—Your Mother.” This was why the apostrophe had to be singular, not plural. “Anna envisioned the holiday as a home-coming, a day to honour your mother, the one woman who dedicated her life to you,” says Antolini. This message was something everyone could get behind, and also appealed to churches – Anna’s decision to have the holiday on a Sunday was a smart move, says Antolini. Three years after Mrs Jarvis’s death, the first Mother’s Day was celebrated in the Andrews Methodist Church in Grafton – Anna Jarvis chose the second Sunday in May because it would always be close to 9 May, the day her mother had died. Anna handed out hundreds of white carnations, her mother’s favourite flower, to the mothers who attended. The popularity of the celebration grew and grew – the Philadelphia Enquirer reports that soon you could not “beg, borrow or steal a carnation”. In 1910 Mother’s Day became a West Virginia state holiday and in 1914 it was designated a national holiday by President Woodrow Wilson. A huge factor in the day’s success was its commercial appeal. “Even though Anna never wanted the day to become commercialised, it did very early. So the floral industry, greeting card industry and candy industry deserve some of the credit for the day’s promotion,” says Antolini. To be Continued…. Source: bbc.com