Mother's Day

The link in the title takes you to the Wikipedia page for Mother's Day. I did not know that the U.S. holiday has its roots in the Civil War. In 1868 a woman named Ann Jarvis organized a committee to establish a "Mother's Friendship Day" so that families torn apart by the Civil War could peacefully come together and begin to heal their wounds. She died before it grew to national recognition...but her daughter Anna succeeded. The first "official" Mother's Day was in 1908. It became a state holiday in West Virginia in 1910. Congress made it a national holiday in 1914. Carnations have been the flower of choice ever since Anna Jarvis delivered 500 of them at that first celebration.

If you do a little more research you will discover that within nine years of that first Mother's Day, Anna Jarvis had become so infuriated with the growing commercialization of the celebration that she publicly spoke out against it. She was arrested in 1948 for disturbing the peace after protesting the holiday. She was supposedly quoted as saying that she "wished she would have never started the day because it became so out of control ...".

It is interesting to note that in the U.S. Mother's Day is one of the most commercially lucrative holidays. It is estimated that Americans spend over $70 billion every year on flowers, cards and gifts. Mother's Day is also the most popular day to dine out at a restaurant. It is also estimated that nearly 8% of the jewelry industry's revenue comes from Mother's Day sales.

So...what do you do for Mother's Day?