--- title: Mother's Day: 2015 Original Message description: Read President Woodrow Wilson's Mother's Day proclamation. canonical: https://time.com/3850695/mothers-day-2015-origins/ author: Olivia B. Waxman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-05-09T16:17:18.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:48:30.066Z og:title: Read the Original Mother's Day Message og:description: In honor of the holiday, read President Woodrow Wilson's proclamation og:url: https://time.com/3850695/mothers-day-2015-origins/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Read the Original Mother's Day Message twitter:description: In honor of the holiday, read President Woodrow Wilson's proclamation twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Read the Original Mother's Day Message > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=2c16557f-d48e-4fb1-b05c-b66e7ff13760&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Time Explains: Mother’s Day’s Dark History [Watch (HLS stream): Time Explains: Mother’s Day’s Dark History](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Q9UI0i1S.m3u8) (2:23)  _Published 2014-05-09. Despite its image, Mother’s Day has a somewhat sordid past — including one founder who hated the holiday and eventually died in a sanitarium._  by [Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/)  ## Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer May 9, 2015 4:17 PM UTC  by [Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/)  ## Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer May 9, 2015 4:17 PM UTC Philadelphia activist Anna Jarvis (1864-1948) came up with the idea for “Mother’s Day” at the beginning of the 20th century as a tribute to her mother. On May 10, 1908, in what is considered the first Mother’s Day celebration, she sent 500 carnations to Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church, her mother’s church in Grafton, W.Va. (which was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1992). The event generated an enormously positive response, and after extensive lobbying and letter-writing efforts, President Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation on May 9, 1914, declaring the second Sunday of May “a public expression of our love and reverence for the mothers of our country.” Read his message here: [Mother’s Day Proclamation](https://www.scribd.com/doc/264676899/Mother-s-Day-Proclamation) Over time, Jarvis felt that the spirit of the day had been undermined by “greedy” floral, candy and greeting card industries, which “gouged the public,” and used the holiday as “a means of profiteering,” the [New York _Times_ reported](http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9903E2DB1339E433A2575BC1A9639C946295D6CF) on May 18, 1923. ## Transcript It's a day normally associated with flowers, time with mom, maybe a hand- drawn card. But Mother's Day has some surprisingly dark elements to its origins. Here's what you need to know. [ MUSIC ]. Although some ancient civilizations celebrated holidays that resemble what we now call Mother's Day, the more modern version originated around the start of the 1900s, thanks in part to two women. The first was Julia Ward Howe, who prompted a Mother's Day for Peace to be held on June 2, 1872, as a way to unite women against war. Most famous for writing The Battle Hymn of the Republic, Howe funded the event for years before it eventually faded out. The second woman was Anna Marie Jarvis. According to the Huffington Post, Anna's mother Ann Jarvis treated wounded soldiers during the Civil War and later became a community organizer. Reportedly in honor of her mother, Anna Jarvis started petitioning in 1905 for a national holiday to honor mothers. In 1910, Jarvis' home state, West Virginia, became the first state to observe the holiday. By 1914, then President Woodrow Wilson was signing a bill that made Mother's Day a nationally recognized holiday. And that's where things started getting a little weird. Responding to the growing commercialization of the holiday, Anna Jarvis turned against the holiday and attempted to end it. National Geographic writes, Jarvis incorporated herself as the Mother's Day International Association and tried to retain some control of the holiday. She organized boycotts, threatened lawsuits, and even attacked First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt for using Mother's Day to raise funds for charities. Anna was enraged by what she considered a lazy excuse for letters that should be hand written. In 1930 Anna was arrested for disturbing the peace at a Mother's Day carnation sale. Sadly, Jarvis would die childless in a sanitarium in 1948. Despite that dark turn though, the holiday celebrated on the second Sunday in May in the US has remained a big hit in the modern era. It's currently celebrated the world over, including in India, Africa and Australia, and can be a serious boon commercially. As The Week reports, Americans are expected to spend 2. 3 billion dollars on flowers for moms this year and more than 20 billion dollars overall. If you want to stay on your mother's good side, you might want to spend a little bit of that yourself, or at least make a phone call home. Thanks for watching, I'm Christian Brian. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3850695/mothers-day-2015-origins/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3850695/mothers-day-2015-origins/"},"headline":"Read the Original Mother's Day Message","datePublished":"2015-05-09T16:17:18.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:48:30.066Z","description":"In honor of the holiday, read President Woodrow Wilson's proclamation","url":"https://time.com/3850695/mothers-day-2015-origins/","keywords":["Newsfeed","society"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Olivia B. 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