This year in Australia, Mothers Day will be held on Sunday 11th May. Happy Mothers Day to all the Mums out there!⠀
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Did you know the history of how Mothers Day came to be?⠀
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Mothers Day started as an anti war movement in the early 1900s by American woman Anna Jarvis in honour of her own mother, leading to president Woodrow Wilson, in 1914, declaring every second Sunday in May to be a national Mothers Day celebration.
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Did you know the history of how Mothers Day came to be?⠀
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Mothers Day started as an anti war movement in the early 1900s by American woman Anna Jarvis in honour of her own mother, leading to president Woodrow Wilson, in 1914, declaring every second Sunday in May to be a national Mothers Day celebration.
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Anna Jarvis came to despise Mothers Day being commercialised by card companies and businesses. In 1920 she wrote “to have Mother’s Day the burdensome, wasteful, expensive gift day that Christmas and other special days have become, is not our pleasure.” She believed it detracted from the original meaning of Mothers Day.⠀
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As the creator of Mothers Day, Jarvis also believed it to be her intellectual and legal property. ⠀
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She copyrighted her own photo, claimed copyright on the phrase “Second Sunday in May, Mother’s Day” (and threatened to sue anyone who marketed it without permission) and incorporated herself as “Mothers Day International Association.”⠀
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She also published a warning on some Mother’s Day International Association Press releases: “Any charity, institution, hospital, organization, or business using Mother’s Day names, work, emblem, or celebration for getting money, making sales or on printed forms should be held as imposters by proper authorities, and reported to this association.”⠀
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It’s unknown exactly how litigious she was based on historical documents, but it’s believed Jarvis had up to 33 simultaneously pending Mothers Day lawsuits at one point.⠀
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Jarvis spent her whole life fighting the commercialisation of Mothers Day and defending her IP claims. She sadly died penniless in 1948 at the age of 84.⠀
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These days Mothers Day celebrations are worth an estimated $9 billion globally and while many focus on the original meaning of Mothers Day, there’s no doubt it has huge value commercially.
To learn more about Anna Jarvis, check out the video below:
