Anna Jarvis organized the first Mother's Day to honor her own dearly departed mother, Ann Maria (née Reeves) Jarvis, and helped to encourage the spread of its observation, eventually influencing then-President Woodrow Wilson to set aside the second Sunday in May as an official, national Mother's Day.

According to historian Katharine Antolini of West Virginia Wesleyan College, who wrote "Memorializing Motherhood: Anna Jarvis and the Defense of Her Mother's Day" as her Ph.D. dissertation, "For Jarvis it was a day where you'd go home to spend time with your mother and thank her for all that she did [. . .] It wasn't to celebrate all mothers. It was to celebrate the best mother you've ever known—your mother—as a son or a daughter." (Source: National Geographic)

Jarvis passionately hated how quickly Mother's Day became commercialized, and fought several legal battles both to try to prevent people from profiting off of it and to protect what she considered her intellectual property. “To have Mother’s Day the burdensome, wasteful, expensive gift day that Christmas and other special days have become, is not our pleasure," she wrote in the 1920s. “If the American people are not willing to protect Mother’s Day from the hordes of money schemers that would overwhelm it with their schemes, then we shall cease having a Mother’s Day—and we know how.” (Source: National Geographic)

“The carnation does not drop its petals, but hugs them to its heart as it dies, and so, too, mothers hug their children to their hearts, their mother love never dying," Jarvis explained in a 1927 interview. (Source: National Geographic)

According to Antolini, "Julia Ward Howe, better known for writing "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," promoted a Mothers’ Peace Day beginning in 1872. For Howe and other antiwar activists, including Anna Jarvis's mother, Mother's Day was a way to promote global unity after the horrors of the American Civil War and Europe’s Franco-Prussian War. 'Howe called for women to gather once a year in parlors, churches, or social halls, to listen to sermons, present essays, sing hymns or pray if they wished—all in the name of promoting peace.'” (Source: National Geographic)

According to CNN, "In 2018, the National Retail Federation (NRF) estimates that US consumers will spend $23.1 billion celebrating Mother's Day. Shoppers will spend an average of $180.00 on Mom."

"Most consumers will give cards (77%) and flowers (69%) to their mothers or take her out to eat (55%) in 2018, but more money will be spent on jewelry ($4.6 billion) than any other category, according to the NRF." (Source: CNN)

Although the dates and names vary from nation to nation, at least 50 countries around the world celebrate Mother's Day as we understand it today— and Canada celebrates it the exact same day as the U.S.!

Have you called your Mom yet today?!

According to the Pew Research Center, "The share of U.S. women at the end of their childbearing years (ages 40 to 44) who had ever given birth in 2016 was 86%, up from 80% in 2006. This was similar to the share who were mothers in the early 1990s."