Happy Mother's Day
Dear Reader, I’m writing this to you on Mother’s Day, though you’ll be reading it tomorrow. I hope yesterday was a good one — whether you were celebrating or being celebrated, or simply missing someone. The Woman Who Created Mother’s Day Here’s something almost nobody knows: the woman who created Mother’s Day died broke, blind, and alone in a sanitarium because she spent every dollar she had trying to cancel the very holiday she built. Her name was Anna Jarvis. When her beloved mother, Ann died in May 1905, Anna made a promise at the graveside that the world would remember women like her. She launched a relentless letter-writing campaign to politicians and church leaders across the country, and in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed Mother’s Day into law as a national holiday. Anna Jarvis had done it. And almost immediately, she was furious. Within years, florists were tripling the price of carnations every May. Greeting card companies were printing millions of sentimental vers...