The national holiday in the United States called Mother's Day was spearheaded by one woman in particular that dearly loved and respected her mother who devoted most of her life to great causes.
The story of this lady Anna Marie Jarvis is an interesting one. She was a career woman and not even a Mother herself.
Andrew's Methodist Episcopal Church
Grafton, West Virginia. Where the first Mother's Day celebration took place. Anna Marie Jarvis's Mother was teaching sunday school her till she passed.
She decided to make a campaign to commemorate Mother's Day and chose the second sunday in May which was May 9th, 1905 the day her mother Ann Marie Reeves Jarvis died.
She started by asking to have a special service in Grafton, West Virginia where she lived
to commemorate her and other Mother's.
She passed out 500 white carnations to all the Mother's there.
She then wrote letters to politicians and any groups that may have any influence to lobby congress to establish the second sunday in May to be Nationally recognized as Mother's Day. It was a long hard process and even quit her job to devote herself fully to this project.
By 1914 Congress passed the bill and President Woodrow Wilson
signed into law that the second sunday in May would be a National Holiday Mother's Day across the nation.
Carnations have come to represent Mother's Day, since Anna Jarvis delivered 500 White carnations at the first celebration in 1908. Many religious services held later adopted the custom of giving away carnations. This also started the custom of wearing a carnation on Mother's Day. The founder, Anna Jarvis, chose the carnation because it was the favorite flower of her mother.
In part due to the shortage of white carnations, and in part due to the efforts to expand the sales of more types of flowers in Mother's Day, the florists promoted wearing a red carnation if your mother was living, or a white one if she was dead; this was tirelessly promoted until it made its way into the popular observations at churches.
Ironically only 9 years later Anna Jarvis was so upset that Mother's Day had become a day for companies to profit with sending just a signed card, flowers or candy, instead of a full nice letter of appreciation to your mom and taking her out to dinner.
She actually started campaigning to rescind Mother's Day and get it stopped. She went door to door trying to get signatures to stop the holiday. In 1930, she was arrested for disturbing the peace by trying to prevent the sale of flowers at a Mother’s Day event. A few years later she was in a sanitarium where she died.
The house that Anna Jarvis grew up in is now a museum.
Here is a nice video on the museum.
Have a Wonderful Muttertag!!!!
Our New Book
Written by my Mother, Aileen Block that patiently took time to record all the events of my grandma's (Oma) life growing up in Germany and immigrating to the United States like so many did to build a new life. Also my dad who has such a good memory helped recall many events of this wonderful story that could have been lost in time.
From Germany with Love
From Germany with Love,
By Aileen Block
This is a nice companion book to Recipes from a German Grandma From Germany with Love tells the story of my grandma, Emma Block, from growing up in a little town in Baden/ Würtemberg, Germany near Heidelberg named Steinsfurt. Then at the age of 15 immigrating to the United States at the age of 15 taking a train with one of her sisters and brothers to Hamburg and sailing the Atlantic with other hope filled Germans wanting to make a new life in the "New World". Life was not easy but with good values she learned in her German upbringing made a full life and wonderful family with celebration including the great German meals that led us to write the book Recipes from a German Grandma.
I have enjoyed reliving this story over and over to get in touch with my German roots and I feel many of you will feel the same, as you had a beautiful loving German Grandma like we did.
