Mother’s Day Turns 100

Mother’s Day in the United States is 100 years old this year. The holiday was founded in the US by Anna Jarvis in 1908 to honor her mother, women’s rights advocate, Anna Reeves Jarvis, who died in 1905. The younger Jarvis was born in West Virginia, but lived in Philadelphia at the time and both claim to be the “birthplace” of Mother’s Day.

Anna Jarvis also began the custom of wearing carnations, her mother’s favorite flower, on Mother’s Day. Tradition states that you wear a white flower if your mother is deceased and a red one if your mother is living.

President Woodrow Wilson created a national Mother’s Day holiday in 1914, to be celebrated on the second Sunday in May

This year, Philadelphia is hosting a “City of Motherly Love” celebration on May 9 at the Wanamaker Building, where the first Mother’s Day celebration took place. The festivities begin at noon and include live music, giveaways, and flowers for mothers.

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