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EDITOR'S NOTE: This is part of a weekly series on our region's history coordinated by the Trumbull County Historical Society.
Mother's Day is a holiday honoring mothers and mother figures that is celebrated across the world.
While the dates and traditions vary over different cultures, the holiday usually involves gifting people flowers, cards and other gifts.
The celebration of motherhood can be traced back to the Greeks and Romans who held festivals in honor of the mother goddesses. The most modern predecessor for our current Mother's Day would be considered the Christian festival of Mothering Sunday. It was celebrated in the United Kingdom and some parts of Europe, and fell on the fourth Sunday during Lent. This was when people would return to their "mother church" for a special service.
This tradition eventually transformed into children presenting their mothers with flowers and small gifts, but fell out of practice until the creation of today's Mother's Day in the United States.
Mother's Day, as we know it today, came into existence in the 1900s because of Anna Jarvis. After her mother's death in 1905, Anna came up with the idea of a Mother's Day to honor the sacrifices mothers make for their children.
Anna gained the backing of John Wanamaker, a department store owner, and organized the first Mother's Day celebration in May of 1908 at a church in Grafton, West Virginia. The same day, one of Wanamaker's stores had thousands attend for a Mother's Day event.
After the success of the first Mother's Day, Anna decided she wanted to see her holiday on the national calendar. She argued that American holidays were focused on male achievements and began a letter writing campaign for the adoption of Mother's Day.
By 1912, many states recognized and celebrated Mother's Day as an annual holiday. And Anna's efforts paid off in 1914 when Woodrow Wilson signed a measure that officially established the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day.
Anna's original vision for Mother's Day was a private celebration between families, visiting mothers and attending church services. But after it was made a national holiday, it was not long before florists, card companies and others began to capitalize on the popularity of the holiday.
Anna had become disgusted with how commercialized the holiday had become, publicly denouncing the path it was going and urging people to stop buying Mother's Day themed gifts. She even started a campaign against those who were profiting from the holiday, launching lawsuits and spending most of her personal money on legal fees.
By the time of Anna's death in 1948, she had spent most of her money and disowned the holiday completely, actively lobbying the government to remove it from the national calendar.
While Anna's vision of Mother's Day changed drastically, it is still a wonderful holiday to celebrate all of the mother figures in your life.
Sarah Moell is curator of collections and research at the Trumbull County Historical Society.