Anna Jarvis, the woman credited with creating one of the world's most celebrated holidays, never married and never had children, got the Mother's Day idea after her mother said it would be nice if someone created a memorial to mothers.
Three years after her mother died in 1905, she organized the first official mother's day service at a church where her mother had spent more than 20 years teaching Sunday school. Thus the first mother's day service was held in a small church in WV in 1908.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are 83 million mothers in the United States. More mothers now work out of the home and the number of single-mother households has tripled to more than 10 million since 1970.
What has allowed Mother's Day to become celebrated on the second Sunday in May in 52 countries is "everyone has a mother,"
West Virginia became the first state in the union to recognize Mother's Day in 1910. President Woodrow Wilson approved a resolution in 1914 marking the second Sunday in May a nationwide observance.
"Mother's Day was meant to be — and still is — a celebration of a nineteenth-century ideal of motherhood, when mothers were supposed to dedicate themselves completely to nurturing their children and making a cozy, safe home"
Yet, Jarvis became increasingly disturbed as the celebration turned into an excuse to sell greeting cards, candy, flowers and other items.
Before she died in 1948, she protested at a Mother's Day celebration in New York, and was arrested for disturbing the peace.
The National Retail Federation estimates that Americans will spend $15 billion this year honoring their mothers. Dining out is expected to be the No. 1 expense.
In the end, Mason said Jarvis was bitter about what the observance had become and "wished she would have never started the day because it became so out of control ..."
