History of Mother’s Day: Ancient and Modern
HISTORY OF MOTHER’S DAY
The person who initially was most active in opposing the celebration of Mother’s Day is the very person who started this holiday in the U.S.
How did that happen?
Origin of Mother’s Day
Anna Jarvis’ mother died in 1905, and in her honor, Anna held a memorial in 1908 in Grafton, West Virginia. She continued to campaign for national recognition of this day for all mothers, with assistance from John Wanamaker and the efforts of Bethany Temple Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. The first state to recognize Mother’s Day was her own, West Virginia, in 1910. President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed Mother’s Day the “second Sunday in May” in 1914.
The spelling was significant: Anna Jarvis did not spell it “Mothers’ Day” because she intended, as she said, that it should “be singular possessive, for each family to honor its mother, not a plural possessive commemorating all mothers of the world.” Nevertheless, in more recent times, both “Mothers’ Day” and “Mother’s Day” are used as names for this holiday.
Carnations for Mother’s Day
Although there had been previous efforts to start a Mother’s Day associated with pacifistic mothers during the American Civil War, some organized by Anna’s mother, it was not until the efforts of Anna Jarvis in the early 20th century that this celebration caught on widely. This holiday is associated with carnations, flying the American flag, and churchgoing.
White carnations were Anna Jarvis’ mother’s favorite flower, and 500 of them were delivered at the first celebration in 1908 by Anna Jarvis herself. Churches would traditionally distribute white carnations to mothers on this day. Due to the shortage of white carnations, florists developed the idea of a red carnation if one’s mother was living and a white one if not. This was promoted widely and is now a common part of the celebration.
Ancient History of Mother’s Day
Gaia
While the American history of this holiday is only a century old, countries outside the U.S. have adopted it to match previous secular or sacred holidays associated with mothering.
One example from Greek antiquity is recounted in Hesiod‘s Theogony (“the birth of the gods”). The primordial earth deity Gaia and the primordial sky deity Uranus – progenitors of the Titans – had a daughter, Rhea.
Rhea and Cronus
Rhea was the wife (and sister) of the Titan Cronus (Greek: time) and was the mother of the Olympian gods and goddesses: Zeus, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, Demeter, Hestia, etc.
The mother cult was initially celebrated in Crete, where myth suggests that Rhea gave birth to Zeus to hide him from Cronus, who was swallowing his children, to prevent them from overthrowing him as he had done to his father, Uranus.
Temple of Magna Mater on a relief now in Villa Medici, Rome. Image: Classical Wisdom
The Magna Mater was an ancient Anatolian goddess believed to have originated in prehistoric fertility cults, and her worship may date back to the Neolithic period. In Phrygia (modern-day western Turkey) and elsewhere, she was known as Cybele. But in Rome, she became known as the Great Mother, or Magna Mater, a mother goddess and likely equivalent of the Greek Rhea, celebrated around March 22-25. However, the celebrations were notorious enough that followers of Cybele were later banished from Rome.
In the pre-Christian British Isles and Celtic Europe, the goddess Brigid, and later St. Brigid, who shared her name, were honored with a spring mother’s day, connected with the “first milk of the ewes,” though it’s celebrated on February 1.
Christian traditions surrounding Mother’s Day
During Christian times in the UK and parts of Europe, people would return to their local “mother church” for a special service before Easter, known as Mothering Sunday, on the fourth Sunday in Lent. In some Catholic and Orthodox countries, it is associated with St. Mary and tied to the day she presented her son, Jesus, at the Temple in Jerusalem (February 2). The day is called the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, or Candlemas. In Eastern Europe, it is sometimes associated with International Women’s Day.
Opposition to Mother’s Day
So, why did Anna Jarvis, who remained unmarried and childless all her life, oppose the very holiday she had started to honor her mother? Within nine years of the first official Mother’s Day in the U.S., it had become so commercialized that she spent the remainder of her life and wealth fighting what she believed was an abuse of the celebration. In 1948, she was arrested for protesting against this commercialization, saying she wished she had never started the day,
“because it became so out of control,” she said
Mother’s Day Gifts
Mother’s Day Spending in the U.S. Source: National Retail Federation.
Nevertheless, Mother’s Day in the U.S. is the second-largest consumer-spending holiday after the Winter holidays, with spending expected to reach $38 billion this year, according to the National Retail Federation. In 2025, U.S. consumers planned to spend nearly $3.5 billion on gift cards for Mother’s Day. And:
- Jewelry: $7 billion
- Special outings: $5.9 billion
- Electronics: $3.5 billion
- Flowers: $3.2 billion
- Greeting cards: $1.1 billion
We don’t see this kind of spending on Father’s Day.
Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
billpetro.com
