When is Mothers Day in USA - A Closer Look at the Holiday's Origins

When is Mothers Day in USA? Mothers Day is celebrated on the second Sunday in May every year in the United States. This year that date will be Sunday May 13, 2007. A woman named Julia Ward Howe who was active in the peace movement during the American Civil War first put the suggestion for Mothers Day forth in 1870. She wrote the Mothers Day Proclamation the same year. However it was Anna M. Jarvis (1864-1948) who is credited as being the driving force behind the very first Mothers Day celebration in the USA. Anna's grief over her mother's death was great in 1906 and she made a promise at her mother's gravesite to establish a special day to honor all mothers, both those living and those who had passed on. On May 10, 1908 St. Andrews's Church in Grafton, West Virginia held a Mothers Day service. Anna passed out her mother's favorite flowers, white carnations, to every mother who attended the service. Then in 1909 Philadelphia was the first city in the United States to officially celebrate Mothers Day.

The question of, "When is Mothers Day in U.S." became a reality for good on May 9, 1914 when President Woodrow Wilson signed a law making it so. He proclaimed that the second Sunday in May every year would be celebrated as Mothers Day for the whole country. The president established the day, "as a time of public expression of our love and reverence for the mothers of our country."

In the United States Mothers Day has gained in popularity by leaps and bounds over the years. It is the busiest day of the year for restaurants, and telephone companies report their lines are jam packed with calls to moms on that day. May is a busy time for mail carriers as well. According to their report, in some years the USA Postal Service had its employees working overtime for a period as long as eight days because of the tremendous amount of cards and letters sent to mothers.

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