My mother taught me to be curious, so I did a little research on her day. It turns out that about 50 countries celebrate some form of Mother’s Day and most of them designated the second Sunday in May as its date.
In the U.S., Anna Jarvis get’s most of the credit for convincing President Woodrow Wilson to sign a bill designating that Sunday as a national holiday for mothers in 1914. Anna wanted to honor her mother, Ann Jarvis Reeves, who created the concept of “Mother’s Day Work Clubs” for healthful activities and who also was a peace activist during those war times. Anna later came to criticize Mother’s Day as being too commercialized. Click on the Leighton Archive image to enlarge it.