Tracker Pixel for Entry

Celebrating Mom

Editorial | May 8th, 2019

A mother, a grandmother, selling cheese in Transylvania, Romania - photograph by C.S. Hagen

According to the National Retail Federation, Americans will spend over $160 on Mom this year, and total spending will reach $19.9 billion. It’s the most popular day for dining out and the third biggest day of the year for Hallmark Cards. The other two are Christmas and Valentine’s Day. It’s also the second biggest day for gift giving.

I’m not a mother, though I do have a 23 pound cat at home. My favorite memories of Mother’s Day don’t revolve around elaborate brunches, though I don’t really recall anything like that going on in my hometown in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Going out to eat was generally reserved for Good Friday or some other special occasion. I remember elementary school pageants, crepe paper corsages and Sunday School crafts -- which may sound hokey, but I tend to get a bit sentimental. It was always stressed that anything handmade meant so much more than store-bought anything.

The origins of Mother’s Day as we know it in America go back to the early 1900s, though it has roots that go back to the 1860s, as women championed for peace and grieved for fallen soldiers. One of the holiday’s biggest champions was a woman named Anna Jarvis, who was never married and never did have children. After her mother’s death in 1905, she wanted to honor the role of motherhood by reserving a special day for them.

She organized the first official Mother’s Day celebration in 1908 at a Methodist church in Grafton, West Virginia, which is now known as the International Mother's Day Shrine. One of her main arguments was that American holidays were biased toward the achievements of men. So, she started a letter-writing campaign to various politicians and news outlets.

By 1912 a handful of states had accepted Mother’s Day as an annual holiday. Finally, in 1914, Woodrow Wilson officially signed off on establishing the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day.

Jarvis envisioned a “Mother’s Day” not a “Mothers Day,” she envisioned it as a personal day to spend time with mom or your nearest and dearest mother figure. Once she realized her holiday had become hijacked as a commercial affair, she did everything in her power to try and stop it. She tried to organize boycotts and protests, and according to an article in National Geographic she even went after First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt for using it as a fundraising opportunity, along with “The American War Mothers” who did the same. During the latter she was arrested for disturbing the peace.

She used up the bulk of her sizeable inheritance trying to reform Mother’s Day and wound up passing away in 1948 at the age of 84 in Philadelphia's Marshall Square Sanitarium, penniless. She could have profited from her holiday, but spent everything rallying against commercialism.

Who knew that the origins of Mother’s Day were so punk rock?

Let’s take a page out of Anna Jarvis’s book and stress the importance of time spent with mom, grandma, auntie… or whoever your matriarch may be. It’s the thought and the time that counts.

Let’s slow down this Sunday and share some good coffee and conversation with Mom. It will mean the world to both of you.

Recently in:

By Alicia Underlee Nelsonalicia@hpr1.com Ten North Dakota communities will participate in the nationwide No Kings Day of Peaceful Action on October 18. The grassroots movement is a nonviolent protest against President Trump’s…

By Michael M. Millermichael.miller@ndsu.edu The Northwest Blade, from Eureka, South Dakota, published a wonderful story in August 2020. It’s called “Granddaughter keeps Grandmother’s precious chamomile seeds,” by Cindy…

Sunday, October 19, 10 a.m.Buffalo River State Park, 565 155th St. S., Glyndon, MNHosted by the Red River Valley Chapter of Herbalists Without Borders at Buffalo River State Park for a fun fall day full of flora. (Say that three…

By John Strandjas@hpr1.com Yes, we know, everywhere you look, the world situation is mental. It’s almost inescapable just how tenuous life’s circumstances are. And how they are mostly — pretty much entirely — out of our…

By Ed Raymondfargogadfly@gmail.comWill we be banging or whimpering at the end of the American empire?T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Hollow Men” accurately portrays the end of most empires in his first lines: “We are the hollow men/…

By Rick Gionrickgion@gmail.com Holiday wine shopping shouldn’t have to be complicated. But unfortunately it can cause unneeded anxiety due to an overabundance of choices. Don’t fret my friends, we once again have you covered…

By Rick Gion and Nichole Hensenrickgion@gmail.com The wait is finally over. Those who have visited Nichole’s Fine Pastry & Cafe lately know about the recent major additions and renovations that have taken place over the past…

By Sabrina Hornungsabrina@hpr1.com Dakotah Faye is a hip-hop artist from Minot, North Dakota, and he’s had a busy year. He’s released two albums. This summer he opened for Tech N9ne in Sturgis and will be opening for Bone…

By Greg Carlsongregcarlson1@gmail.com Dream-factory documentarian Alexandre O. Philippe connects with a Hollywood legend in “Kim Novak’s Vertigo,” the latest in a series of features exploring the filmmaker’s many…

By HPR staffsubmit@hpr1.com Mark the first weekend of October on your calendar. It’s the weekend of the Studio Crawl, which takes us all on a wonderful, metro-wide tour of our talented (and often wacky) arts community. On October…

Press release“Shakespeare with a sharpened edge.” To launch its 2025 – 2026 season, Theatre NDSU is thrilled to team up with Moorhead-based organization Theatre B to perform a co-production of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and…

By Annie Prafckeannieprafcke@gmail.com AUSTIN, Texas – As a Chinese-American, connecting to my culture through food is essential, and no dish brings me back to my mother’s kitchen quite like hotdish. Yes, you heard me right –…

By Sabrina Hornungsabrina@hpr1.comNew Jamestown Brewery Serves up Local FlavorThere’s something delicious brewing out here on the prairie and it just so happens to be the newest brewery west of the Red River and east of the…

Press Release As Breast Cancer Awareness Month begins, Essentia Health is highlighting an innovative — and recently expanded — program that brings early breast cancer detection services to rural communities. Essentia’s mobile…

By Alicia Underlee NelsonProtests against President Trump’s policies and the cuts made by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are planned across North Dakota and western Minnesota Friday, April 4 and…

By Vern Thompsonvern.thompson@rocketmail.comMoral accountability and the crisis of leadership  As a recovering person living one day at a time for the last 35 years, I have learned not to judge others because I have not walked in…