Ana Jarvis - The Woman Who Started 'Mother's Day'

Mother's Day, Mother's Day, or some other name.

This is the day when most people around the world thank their mothers or women who play the role of mother for their sacrifice and dedication.

Some people organize big parties, while some people put old pictures and digital greeting cards etc. of their mothers on social media.

But do you know how Mother's Day started and what did Anna Jarvis think of it?

Where and how Mother's Day started?

Many people around the world celebrate Mother's Day on the second Sunday of May.

It continues in the era of coronavirus. But if Ana Jarvis had an opinion, she would have liked simplicity on Mother's Day in this era.

This day, being celebrated in the name of mothers was commercialized at the same time when Ana Jarvis was alive.

And she was disappointed with the commercialization of this day to such an extent that she campaigned against celebrating this day.

When historians went looking for Ana

There was a day when a woman called Elizabeth Bur received a call.

The caller asked him about his family's history.

Upon hearing all this, Elizabeth felt as if someone had committed fraud with her on the Internet.

Elizabeth says, "I felt as if someone had stolen my identity and now I will never be able to see my deposit."

But this phone call was not of a fraudulent person but of a historian who was looking for the living descendants of Ana Jarvis.

Ana was the woman who started Mother's Day in America about 100 years from now.

Anna Jarvis was one of 13 siblings. But only four of them could reach the age of adults.

Among Jarvis' siblings, only his elder brother succeeded in giving birth to his children. But many of these children died of TB at a very young age.

The last descendant of Ana Jarvis died in the year 1990.

After this, historian Elizabeth Zetland, associated with an institution called MyHeritage, started searching for Anna's close relations. And while doing so, she reached Elizabeth Bur.

When he comes back on the phone call, when Elizabeth Barr realizes that nothing wrong has happened to him, he tells that his aunts and fathers never celebrated Mother's Day because they respected Anna so much.

And these people also respect Ana's feeling that the idea of ​​celebrating Mother's Day has been changed for the sake of business interests.

The idea of ​​Mother's Day that Anna Jarvis started celebrating, she got from her mother Ann Reeves Jarvis.

Anna was fulfilling her mother's dream

Another historian Katherine Antolini says that Mrs. Jarvis spent her whole life convincing women that they had to take good care of their children and that she also wanted to respect the work of mothers.

A burial Jarvis said, "I hope, but I also pray that someone will someday make a day for mothers. So that a mother can be honored for the incomparable service that humanity does."

From the year 1858 she was quite active in the Methodist Episcopal Church. There she was running a Mother's Day network.

The aim was to reduce high infant mortality and child mortality. This was mostly due to a disease spreading in his area Grafton, West Virginia.

Ann Reeves used to involve women in small groups where these women understood the important things related to cleanliness, such as learning about the benefits of drinking boiled water, etc.

The victims of organizing these groups used to give medicines and necessary items to the families of the victims. And in the event of the spread of infectious diseases, they used to isolate the communities also when needed.

Professor Catherine Antolini at West Virginia Wesleyan College says Ann Reeves Jarvis was herself a mother whose nine children had died.

Five of these children died of disease possibly during the American Civil War.

When Ann Reeves Jarvis died in 1905, she had four children around.

In this hour of grief, Ana Jarvis vowed to fulfill her mother's dream.

Ana's idea was different

Antolini says that her way of fulfilling this dream was a bit different.

Ann Reeves wanted people to appreciate the work done by mothers on Mother's Day.

But Ana Jarvis wanted people to remember and appreciate her mother's sacrifice on Mother's Day.

This was a message that was easy for everyone to accept. Everyone could agree with this.

Churches also liked this message. Antolini says that Ana's move was quite spectacular.

Ana's idea spread like wildfire

Mother's Day was held for the first time at Andrews Methodist Church in Grafton, three years after Ann Reeves' death.

Ana Jarvis chose the second Sunday of May because the day fell closer to May 9, which was her mother's death anniversary.

Ana had distributed hundreds of white carnation flowers among the women attending the event on Mother's Day, which were also her mother's favorite flowers.

The fame of the event rose to such an extent that in the coming time a local newspaper, Philadelphia Inquirer published the news that it was a challenge for people to get the carnation flower on the occasion of Mother's Day.

In the year 1910, it became the State Day of West Virginia State. After this, in the year 1914, President Woodrow Wilson declared it as America's State Day.

Flower and Chocolate Day

Antolini says that the biggest reason for the success of this campaign was its commercial side.

She says, "However, Ana never wanted the day to be commercialized. But it happened very fast. In this way, florists, greeting card printers, and toffee-chocolate makers get credit for making the day popular." needed."

But this was not at all what Ana wanted. When the prices of carnation flowers started touching the sky, he issued a press release condemning the flowers.

He wrote that what will you do to those people like thieves, robbers, robbers who have reduced the importance of such a great opportunity in their greed.

In the year 1920, he even appealed to the people not to buy flowers.

Antolini says that she was angry with every institution that was using her emotional expression and thoughts. These included those organizations that were using this opportunity to raise donations, whether they were using the funds raised to help poor mothers.

Says Antolini, "It was a day to appreciate the work of mothers and not to be moved with pity for them because they were poor. And some charity organizations were making such claims but used according to their claims collected on this day Was not doing. "

Mother's Day was also linked with the debate of women getting voting rights.

People argued against this demand that a woman's real place is in the house and she is very busy as a wife and mother. And putting them in politics is like increasing work for them.

At the same time, those who supported this demand said that if she is eligible to be the mother of a man's children, then she should also get the right to vote.

People on this side argued that women should have the right to decide the future of their children.

But it seems that Ana was the only one who refused to take advantage of Mother's Day. He refused to take money from those doing business of flowers.

Antolini says that she never took advantage of this day when she could do so and I respect her for this.

Last time in loneliness

As long as Anna was alive, she fought against the commercialization of this day.

On the second day of May, she also got copyright called Mother's Day so that no one else could use the word.

According to an article in the newspaper Newsweek, 33 legal cases were pending until 1944.

By this time Ana Jarvis had reached 80 years of age and she had stopped seeing and hearing.

And she was living in an old age home where she died of a heart attack after four years.

But in the last phase of his life-long campaign, he went to the house of the people and got them signed on the papers that requested to end this day.