Celebrating Mother’s Day!

Hopefully, we already show appreciation for moms all year long, but Mother’s Day is a great day to go a step beyond and do something special for mothers! In celebration of Mother’s Day, we wanted to share with you some fun facts about its history:

• American celebrations of mothers were held prior to the official Mother’s Day holiday. For example, Anna Reeves Jarvis coordinated celebrations in Virginia before the Civil War and in West Virginia after the War.¹ Other early versions of Mother’s Day were organized from the 1870s to the early 1900s by Julia Ward Howe, Mary Towles Sasseen, Frank Hering, and others.²
• On May 10, 1908, Anna Jarvis (pictured on the right), daughter of Anna Reeves Jarvis, organized the first modern Mother’s Day celebrations in West Virginia and Philadelphia in honor of her own mother.³ (She also spoke against the rampant commercialism related to Mother’s Day.⁴)
• In 1910, West Virginia became the first state to hold an official statewide celebration.⁵
• On May 9, 1914, President Woodrow Wilson issued the first federal Mother’s Day proclamation, declaring the holiday to be recognized the second Sunday in May.⁶
• Today, Mother’s Day is celebrated by nations around the world.⁷

Mothers deserve recognition for their many contributions to America’s history, and at WallBuilders, we have several wonderful works related to some of the great mothers in history as well as much more.

Footnotes

¹ “Mother’s Day 2025,” History.com, accessed May 8, 2025.
² See, for example: Heidi Stonehill, “The Forgotten History of Mother’s Day,” May 1, 2025, Almanac.com; Stephanie Hall, “Some Songs for Mother’s Day,” May 11, 2014, Library of Congress.
³ “The Tenacious Woman Who Helped Deliver Mother’s Day to the U.S.,” May 7, 2015, Time.
⁴ Lily Rothman, “3 Historical Arguments Against Mother’s Day,” May 10, 2015, Time.
⁵ “Mother’s Day: Topics in Chronicling America,” Library of Congress, accessed May 8, 2025.
⁶ “President Woodrow Wilson’s Mother’s Day Proclamation of May 9, 1914,” National Archives.
⁷ Noah Rayman, “Here’s How 9 Other Countries Celebrate Mother’s Day,” May 11, 2014, Time; Tierney McAfee, “10 Unique Mother’s Day Traditions Around the World,” March 13, 2024, The Pioneer Woman; “When is Mother’s Day Around the World?” Holidays on the Net, accessed May 8, 2025.