On Sunday, May 11, our nation will celebrate the 100th year anniversary of Mother's Day. The United Kingdom began celebrating mothers much earlier than the United States. In the 17th century, on "Mothering Sunday," children in the UK presented their mothers with flowers and "Mothering Cakes." Early Christians celebrated a sort of mother's day each year (on the fourth Sunday of Lent), when they remembered and celebrated the Virgin Mary, the Mother of Christ. Legend points to mother's day remembrances practiced each spring by the ancient Romans and Greeks.

Now observed in more than 46 countries (often set on different dates), official and annual Mother's Day celebrations give people the opportunity to thank their own mothers as well as recognize the valuable impact upon society the world's mothers make and have made.

United States citizen and social activist, Julia Ward Howe (who wrote the Civil War song, "Battle Hymn of the Republic"), wrote a powerful "Mothers Day Proclamation" in Boston in 1870. She called for women to unite against war and work together to promote peace. (See www.rediscovermothersday.org/). She failed, however, to get formal and national recognition of an official Mother's Day for Peace.

Several years before, West Virginia's Ann Marie Reeves Jarvis - an Appalachian homemaker and mother of 11 children - organized women to work together to improve sanitary conditions for the Union and Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. She organized Mothers Day Work Clubs in local churches. She called on the women to help combat poor health and sanitation conditions in their communities that attributed to the high mortality rate of children. (Only four of her own children lived to adulthood.)

After teaching a Sunday School class on "The Mothers of the Bible," Ann Marie said a prayer that was overheard by her 12-year old daughter, Anna. She prayed: "I hope that someone, sometime will found a memorial mothers day commemorating her for the matchless service she renders to humanity in every field of life. She is entitled to it."

When Ann Marie died in 1905, her daughter, Anna Jarvis–a school teacher who never married nor had children - desired to fulfill her mother's lifelong dream that all mothers, both living and dead, be honored annually. She worked hard to establish an official "memorial day for women," and also to bestow honor and dignity on women who were homemakers.

The first such Mother's Day took place in Grafton, West Virginia, on May 10, 1908, in the Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church, (now United Methodist), where Anna's mother had taught Sunday School for two decades. Anna chose to honor her mother on that special day with carnations - her mother's favorite flower, and a flower Anna thought symbolized a mother's pure love.

Due to Anna's determination and persistence, by 1911, almost every state in the Union celebrated a "mother's day," and by 1912, the holiday was declared official by some states. The 1912 General Conference of The Methodist Episcopal Church, at the suggestion of Andrews M.E. church delegates, recognized Anna Jarvis as the founder of the holiday. On May 8, 1914, President Woodrow Wilson declared the first national Mother's Day to honor those mothers whose sons had died in war. He designated the second Sunday in May as the official annual date.

But less than a decade later, Anna Jarvis stated her disappointment that Mother's Day had become too commercial, and she lamented having ever started the tradition. She became one of the holiday's major opponents! Anna died on November 24, 1948, and was buried beside her mother at the West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia.