Mother’s Day is Sunday, May 10. To mark the occasion, here are four facts about the day set aside to honor motherhood.
1. Anna Jarvis is credited as the founder of Mother’s Day. The West Virginia native campaigned in the early 1900s to create the holiday to honor her own mother, Ann Jarvis, a Civil War-era social activist and Sunday school teacher.
2. The first Mother’s Day service was held in a church in Grafton, WV, on May 12, 1907. The holiday was officially declared by West Virginia in 1910, with most states doing the same over the next few years. Congress passed a law in 1914 designating the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day. The U.S. Post Office Department, the forerunner of the Postal Service, issued its first Mother’s Day stamp in 1934.
3. More than 133 million Mother’s Day cards are mailed each year. It’s the third-largest holiday in the United States for sending cards, according to the Greeting Card Association, behind Christmas and Valentine’s Day.
4. People spend an average of $205 on Mother’s Day gifts and celebrations. The most popular Mother’s Day gift categories are housewares (25 percent), books or CDs (24 percent) and electronics (19 percent), according to the National Retail Federation.