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Mothers Day is approaching and you would like to give something special to Mother to show her how much she means to you. Before looking around and finding something that suits you, here are some fun facts in honor of this special day:

Mother’s Day originated in the United States in the early 1900s. Although there are older traditions that celebrate similar holidays, they are not considered to be the origins of Mother’s Day. Mother’s Day is meant to honor mothers and their influence in society, maternal bonds and motherhood itself. In the United States and Canada it is celebrated on the second Sunday in May, but in other parts of the world it is sometimes celebrated in March, as well as in other months.

The first Mother’s Day was celebrated in 1908. Anna Jarvis honored her mother Ann Jarvis with a memorial. Ann Jarvis had started a committee in 1868 to establish ‘Mother’s Friendship Day’. Her motivation had been to reunite families after the Civil War. She died in 1905, before Mother’s Day became a holiday.

In 1912, Anna Jarvis trademarked both ‘Mother’s Day’ and ‘the second Sunday in May’. She also created Mother’s Day International Association

At first, people observed Mother’s Day by attending church, writing letters to their mothers, and eventually, by sending cards, presents, and flowers. With the increasing gift-giving activity associated with Mother’s Day, Anna Jarvis became enraged. She believed that the day’s sentiment was being sacrificed at the expense of greed and profit. In 1923 she filed a lawsuit to stop a Mother’s Day festival, and was even arrested for disturbing the peace at a convention selling carnations for a war mother’s group. Before her death in 1948, Jarvis is said to have confessed that she regretted ever starting the mother’s day tradition.

Despite Jarvis’s misgivings, Mother’s Day has flourished in the United States. In fact, the second Sunday of May has become the most popular day of the year to dine out, and telephone lines record their highest traffic, as sons and daughters everywhere take advantage of this day to honor and to express appreciation of their mothers.

Did you know???

Of all the flowers bought for holidays, one quarter are purchased for Mother’s Day.

Carnations are a popular symbol of Mother’s Day. The tradition is to honor mothers who are living with colored flowers, and those who are deceased with white ones. Most of the flowers given for Mother’s Day come from California

The amount of money spent on Mother’s Day in the U.S. is approximately $14 billion.

Common gifts on Mother’s Day include: flowers, dinner or lunch in a restaurant, jewelry, gift cards, clothing and treats such as a trip to a spa. Books, CDs, housewares and gardening tools are popular gifts as well.

Approximately 122 million phone calls are made to moms on Mother’s Day in the United States

In the former Yugoslavia, children would tie up their mother on Mother’s Day. In order to be freed she had to pay them with treats.

In most countries and languages, the word for mother begins with ‘M’

The world’s most prolific mother was a Russian lady, Mrs. Vassilyev, who had 69 children in 27 pregnancies. She had no single births, but multiple sets of twins, triplets and quadruplets. And it seems 67 of those kids survived past infancy.

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