The Real Story of Mother's Day — And What We Turned It Into

Most people know Mother's Day as flowers, brunch, and greeting cards. But the real story of Mother's Day is one of the most fascinating and heartbreaking origin stories in American history. The woman who created it — Anna Jarvis — never married, never had children, spent her entire personal fortune fighting to cancel it, and died alone and penniless in a sanitarium in 1948. And here's the part that will stop you cold: a portion of her medical bills were reportedly paid by the greeting card and floral industries she had spent her life fighting against.

In this episode of Past Present Pushback, XO, AZ, and CDA go deep on the real origin of Mother's Day — from its roots in the Civil War to Julia Ward Howe's peace proclamation, to Anna Jarvis's fight to honor her mother, to the commercial machine that turned a personal holy day into a $35 billion retail event. And then we talk about what Mother's Day means in the Black community — where we've always celebrated more than just biological mothers, and where the holiday hits different because the women it honors carried more than most.

Keywords: Mother's Day history, Anna Jarvis Mother's Day, who created Mother's Day, Mother's Day commercialization, Hallmark holidays, Mother's Day Black community, Julia Ward Howe, origin of Mother's Day, Past Present Pushback podcast, Black mothers history