Anna Jarvis and the history of Mother’s Day

But in fact Mother’s Day has a long history, an officially recognized holiday, he became only about a century ago. The tradition of providing specific date for this holiday is available in English-speaking countries. For example, in the UK from the XVII to XIX century during Lent noted «Mothering Sunday» (Mothering Sunday), in the United States, the peak of interest in the holiday falls on the XIX century, when the first Julia Ward, and then more successfully Anna Jarvis announced the need for Mother’s Day. Having lost his mother in 1905, Anna Jarvis in 1907 launched an initiative to support her idea of ​​a holiday mothers. She started to apply to the government agencies with a request to legalize the Mother’s Day and made his own. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed a decree that from now on the second Sunday of May is celebrated in the United States as a national holiday dedicated to all mothers.

The fate of Anna Jarvis is hardly happy. Known as the «Mother of Mother’s Day,» she herself is the mother never became. She wanted this celebration was simple but had a deeper meaning in this vision of her Mother’s Day dispersed with the opinion of the consumer society which encourages children to give gifts to their mothers. This primitive attitude of the holiday, which was originally invested another, deeper meaning disappointed Anna, she even tried to collect signatures for its abolition, but that it did not succeed.

Compatriots remember Anna, in the house where she was born, is now a memorial museum and the church of her native town of Grafton in Virginia each year the solemn service in honor of Mother’s Day. We suggest you view the subject prepared for the Outlook on the TV channel to the West Virginia Broadcasting centennial anniversary of Mother’s Day in the United States.

Mother’s Day is celebrated this Sunday. A special Mother’s Day service will take place in Grafton. Grafton is located in Taylor County and it’s where Mother’s Day began a hundred years ago. Emily Corio has more on the West Virginia connection to Mother’s Day, and how the person who started it all later lamented what the holiday turned into.

Century old stained glass and huge mirror still decorate the chapel walls where the first Mother’s Day service was held a hundred years ago. The international Mother’s Day shrine looks like a traditional church because it was for decades. One of its members was Ann Reeves Jarvis. She’s the mother who inspired Mother’s Day.

Ann Reeves Jarvis was actually the assistant superintendant of the primary department of the church school. And she also worked to bring the mothers together and to mothers’ workgroups to help improve sanitary conditions in the community, to improve the health and to reduce infant mortality in the area. She died in 1905. Her daughter Anna Jarvis declared when her mother died that she would create a day to honor all mothers in an effort to honor her own mother.

In this room we have the resolution that President Wilson signed on May 8th 1914 making Mother’s Day the legal holiday that we celebrate today. Now remember we celebrated Mother’s Day many-many times before that even dating back to the Greek days, but it was not official and that’s why Anna Jarvis is giving the distinction of starting Mother’s Day even though other people did try to do that and did things to do that but she got the resolution passed in Congress.

Anna Jarvis was born here in 1864. Now the home is a museum open for tours.

In 1994 my husband and I were travelling through here and we saw the house in shambles. And we were really distracted over that because of the fact that’s such a significant and important thing for the state of West Virginia and Taylor County. So we met a lady by the name of Auchen Profoun and she offered a house to us and we accepted it and so in 1994 they decided to give us the house on Mother’s Day. So we stood up there on the front porch and we accepted the keys and we started the restoration project which took us two years and Thunder on the Tygart Foundation, a nonprofit organization, is the owner of the properties and we just work here as volunteers.

The nineteenth century farmhouse in Tailor County looks authentic down to the floor wallpaper, the black and white pictures of the Jarvis family and the many antiques that belonged to Anna Jarvis.

Oh we have many of her wonderful things. She sent postcards to people all the time. So this is one that was sent to a lady in Grafton in 1916 reminding them about Mother’s Day, and if we look on everything that Anna Jarvis had made for Mother’s Day it never says «Happy Mother’s Day», it only says «Mother’s Day» .

Anna Jarvis wanted Mother’s Day to be simple but meaningful. She wanted sons and daughters to write letters to their mothers and not to sign their name at the bottom of the greeting card. She wanted mothers to rest on this holiday. So Jarvis was upset when she saw flowers, greeting cards and candy become focal points of the holiday.

She was going door-to-door getting a petition sign to resent Mother’s Day because of the commercialization of it. She did not want it to be a holiday any longer. She figured that it just can go more commercialized in the future. And she was quickly placed in a Marshall Square Sanatorium outside the West Chester, Pennsylvania, where she ended up dying on November the 24th 1948. The people that actually paid her bill at the Sanatorium were actually «the card and flowers people», so our assumption is that they put her there to keep her quiet because Anna Jarvis would never give up on a project until it was complete.

Anna Jarvis never married and she did not have any children of her own but she is considered «the mother of Mother’s Day» and Grafton celebrates that for one hundred time this year. For Outlook, I’m Emily Corio.

Useful words and phrases:

• Service, n — service, service (This polysemous word has several meanings, here it is used in a religious sense).
• Lament, v — 1) groan, cry; to grieve; to grieve; lament; complain; 2) to mourn.
• Chapel, n — chapel chapel.
• Shrine, n — the tomb, an altar, a temple, a shrine (American English are inherent in the last three values).
• Decade, n — decade.
• Superintendant, n — Director.
• Sanitary conditions — sanitary conditions.
• Infant mortality — infant mortality.
• Date back to — date, rooted in … start at ….
• In shambles — in shambles, a mess.
• Front porch — forecourt.
• Restoration project — restoration project.
• Nonprofit organization — public (non-profit) organization (charitable, educational, professional or other organization, usually created in the form of a non-profit corporation [nonprofit corporation], not putting as the statutory objectives of making a profit. Funds received by an organization from individuals, companies and organizations It is not taxed. In the United States there are tens of thousands of the most diverse social groups. An example of one of the largest non-profit organizations can serve as a news agency Associated Press [Associated Press] (American English Dictionary ).
• Property — property.
• Meaningful, adj — a significant, important, meaningful.
• Give up — leave, quit, give up (on).
• Focal point — the focus, the focal point, the main point, the main question.

And now we offer you to perform a short test on the understanding of the plot.

 

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