Anna Jarvis of Philadelphia, to memorialize her mother, public health advocate Ann Reeves Jarvis after her death in 1905, started campaigning for a national day honoring mothers, because mothers are “entitled to it,” according to Almanac.

She besieged public servants and civic organizations with the idea, and wrote booklets. In May 1907, she held a memorial service for her mother at a Methodist Church in West Virginia. The following year, a service there honored all mothers, and the idea of Mother’s Day being the second Sunday in May was born.

West Virginia was the first state to officially adopt Mother’s Day, several others followed, and eventually, in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson made the second Sunday in May officially Mother’s Day.

Once the card, gift and flower companies jumped into Mother’s Day, Anna railed relentlessly against the commercialism and hoopla that overtook the simple Sunday holiday she envisioned to honor her mother. She died, childless, in 1948.

OK, so maybe she didn’t enjoy the holiday she created, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us have to follow suit. Happy Mother’s Day!