We are florists. Mother’s Day is one of the two biggest days of our year (the other is Valentine’s Day). We design hundreds of arrangements, coordinate dozens of deliveries, and help people say “I love you, Mom” in the most beautiful way we know how. It pays our rent. It keeps our doors open. We are grateful for it.
And the woman who created Mother’s Day would despise us for it.
This is the story of Anna Jarvis — the woman who invented Mother’s Day, fought for a decade to make it a national holiday, and then spent the rest of her life trying to destroy it because of what it became. It is one of the strangest, saddest, and most ironic stories in American cultural history. And as florists, we think you should know it.
🏠 Grafton, West Virginia, 1905
Anna Marie Jarvis was born in 1864 in Webster, West Virginia. Her mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, was a community organizer and activist who ran “Mothers’ Day Work Clubs” in the years before and during the Civil War — groups of women who improved sanitation, cared for wounded soldiers on both sides of the conflict, and organized community health initiatives. Ann Reeves Jarvis was, by all accounts, a remarkable woman who believed that mothers were the moral engine of civilization.
Ann died on May 9, 1905, in Philadelphia. Her daughter Anna was devastated. And in her grief, Anna became consumed with a single idea: American mothers deserved a dedicated day of recognition. Not a commercial event. Not a gift-giving occasion. A day of quiet, personal gratitude — a day when children would write a letter, attend church with their mothers, and wear a white carnation as a symbol of the love they carried.
Anna chose the white carnation because it was her mother’s favorite flower. She said it represented “the purity, faithfulness, charity, beauty, and endurance of a mother’s love.” The white petals stood for purity. The fact that the carnation does not drop its petals but hugs them to its heart as it dies symbolized the way a mother holds her family close. It was personal. It was specific. It was not about commerce.
📜 The Campaign (1907–1914)
Anna Jarvis was not a politician. She was not wealthy. She was a single woman living in Philadelphia with no particular platform or power. But she had the one thing that moves mountains in America: relentless, obsessive persistence.
Starting in 1907, Jarvis launched a one-woman lobbying campaign to establish a national Mother’s Day. She wrote thousands of letters — to every member of Congress, to every state governor, to newspaper editors, to church leaders, to business executives, to anyone who would listen. She organized the first official Mother’s Day observance on May 10, 1908, at Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church in Grafton, West Virginia (the church where her mother had taught Sunday school), with a simultaneous event at Wanamaker’s department store in Philadelphia.
The idea caught fire. By 1911, Mother’s Day was celebrated in almost every state. By 1912, several states had made it an official holiday. And on May 8, 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation designating the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day — a national holiday.
Anna Jarvis had won. She was 49 years old. She had spent seven years in a campaign that consumed every dollar, every waking hour, and every ounce of her energy. She had created a national holiday from nothing.
And then she watched it be taken from her.
💸 The Commercialization (1914–1920s)
The moment Mother’s Day became official, American industry saw the opportunity. Within a year:
- The floral industry began marketing carnations and bouquets specifically for Mother’s Day, driving prices up on the holiday weekend
- Greeting card companies created dedicated Mother’s Day card lines
- Candy companies launched Mother’s Day chocolate boxes
- Department stores ran Mother’s Day sales and promotions
- The white carnation Anna had chosen as a personal symbol of her own mother was mass-produced, marked up, and sold at inflated prices to millions of guilt-driven children
By the early 1920s, Mother’s Day was a multi-million-dollar commercial event. The quiet, personal, letter-writing, church-attending day of gratitude that Anna Jarvis had envisioned was gone. In its place was a holiday built on obligation, guilt, and retail spending.
Anna Jarvis was horrified.
💢 The Rage (1920s–1940s)
What followed was one of the most extraordinary one-woman wars against an industry in American history. Anna Jarvis dedicated the last three decades of her life to trying to abolish the holiday she had created.
She filed lawsuits. She threatened boycotts. She organized protests. She was arrested for disturbing the peace at a Mother’s Day carnation sale. She publicly denounced florists, greeting card companies, and candy makers in language that makes modern internet outrage look polite:
“A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world.”
“Any mother would rather have a line of the worst scribble from her son or daughter than any fancy greeting card.”
On the floral industry specifically, she was merciless:
“What will you do to route charlatans, bandits, pirates, racketeers, kidnappers, and other termites that would undermine with their greed one of the finest, noblest, and truest movements and celebrations?”
She called commercially sold carnations “a mark of laziness.” She tried to trademark “Mother’s Day” and “second Sunday in May” to prevent commercial use. She petitioned to have the holiday rescinded. She spent her inheritance on legal battles. She alienated allies. She grew increasingly isolated.
Nobody listened. The holiday was too profitable. The industry was too powerful. And the public had already accepted the commercial version as the real one.
🏥 The Ironic Ending
Anna Jarvis never married and never had children. By the 1940s, she was blind, frail, and living in poverty. In 1948, she was placed in Marshall Square Sanitarium in West Chester, Pennsylvania, where she spent the final years of her life.
She could not afford the bills.
They were paid — anonymously, quietly, and with an irony so heavy it borders on cruelty — by the floral industry. The people she had spent three decades calling pirates and racketeers funded her final care. She likely never knew.
Anna Jarvis died on November 24, 1948, at age 84. She is buried in West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. Her grave receives flowers every Mother’s Day. She would probably prefer a handwritten letter.
🌺 A Florist’s Honest Reckoning
We are the industry Anna Jarvis hated. We sell flowers on the holiday she created. We benefit from the commercialization she spent her life fighting. We are, by her definition, the problem.
And here is what we think about that:
She was partly right. Mother’s Day can be hollow. A guilt-driven purchase made on Saturday night because you forgot until the last minute, grabbed a generic bouquet from a grocery store, and called it done — that is exactly the empty gesture Jarvis warned about. A printed card chosen in 30 seconds because the Hallmark aisle was right there. An obligation met. A box checked. Mom knows the difference. She always knows.
But she was also partly wrong. Flowers are not inherently lazy or commercial. A thoughtful arrangement — one chosen with your specific mother in mind, designed by someone who asked what she likes, delivered with a handwritten card that says something only you could say — is not a “mark of laziness.” It is a physical expression of the gratitude Jarvis wanted people to feel. It is how some people say the thing they cannot write.
The answer is not to stop sending flowers on Mother’s Day. The answer is to send them with intention. To write the card yourself. To think about what your mother actually loves — her favorite color, her favorite flower, the arrangement style that would make her smile specifically. To make the gesture personal rather than generic. To honor what Jarvis wanted — genuine, specific, personal gratitude — while using the tools of the industry she hated to deliver it.
💌 What Anna Jarvis Got Right (And What You Should Do)
- Write the card yourself. Do not use the florist’s pre-written message. Do not let the card say “Happy Mother’s Day!” and nothing else. Write something real. Write something specific. Tell her one thing she did that shaped who you are. It takes two minutes and it matters more than the flowers.
- Make it personal. Does your mom love sunflowers? Lavender? Peonies? Does she hate roses? Does she prefer plants she can keep alive to cut flowers that fade? Tell your florist. We will design around her, not around a template.
- Call her. In addition to the flowers, not instead of them. Jarvis was right that a personal connection matters more than any product. The flowers are a complement, not a substitute.
- Do not wait until Saturday night. Planning ahead is not about logistics. It is about demonstrating that this was not an afterthought. Order early. Write the card thoughtfully. Show that you were thinking about her before the calendar reminder went off.
Mother’s Day is May 11 this year. You have time. Use it well.
Browse our arrangements, plants, and gifts. Same-day delivery. And when you order, write the card yourself. Anna would have wanted that. 📜