I love crazy bitches sooo much!
Especially this crazy bitch! ----------------->
She is the lunatic inventor of my favorite holiday, Mother's Day! Wooot!
In my family Mother's Day is also known as "Mommy drinks champagne with other mommies, gets a massage, eats chocolate, has breakfast in bed, gets a facial, enjoys receiving a mani pedi, and gets a all of her favorite food for dinner plus anything she wants....day." :D
I cannot believe it took us until 1914 to figure out this was a great idea!
Without Anna Jarvis this awesome day would have never bestowed its gifts upon womankind, and without her insane personality it would have never become a national holiday. Even President Wilson was scared of this old miser!
Miss Jarvis was never married, nor did she have any children. However, she did have an obsession with her mother that was reminiscent of "Psycho's" Norman, though once I found out how much of a badass her mother was, I couldn't quite blame her.
Anna Jarvis's mother, Anne, went through much more pain in her lifetime then the majority of us will ever have to endure, and her difficult life only made her a more resilient woman who's compassion knew no bounds. It is debated how many children she gave birth to. We know it was somewhere between 11 and 14. The point is the woman spent a decade or more of her life pregnant.
Hardcore lady.
Unfortunately for Anne only four of her children survived to adulthood, one of them being Miss Anna Jarvis. The sorrow she experienced with the loss of her children only served to increase her faith in God and her determination to help those in her community. Being the faithful wife of the town minister, Anna attended church each Sunday and created a mother's club for women in her community. During the civil war she was taught how to nurse the soldiers back to health by her brother who was a doctor. Anna Jarvis welcomed both confederate and yankee soldiers in her home and allowed them to stay until they died from their wounds or were healed.
After the war ended Anne used her mother's club to settle tension in her town between neighbors who's sons had been on different sides of the battlefield. When Anna's father died they moved to Philadelphia to live with her brother, the only one of Anne's children who married and had children.
When Anne died Miss Anna Jarvis fell into a pit of despair. It was at this point that she began to lose her mind. She was often described by others as an angry spinster and soon entered into a deep depression. However, like her mother she decided to use her sorrow for a positive cause. It was then that she began to campaign for Mother's Day, but she not only knew she wanted it to be a national holiday. She knew the way she wanted people to celebrate it as well. Anna had it in mind that people would give their mother a white carnation as a symbol of their appreciation, but the holiday itself would be in honor of her mother.
With Anna's determination, cities, towns, and even states around the country soon began celebrating Mother's Day. Finally, in 1914, President Wilson assigned Mother's Day as a national holiday. It was to be held each year on the second Sunday in May, which was the anniversary of Mrs. Anne Jarvis' death.
You would think that Anna would have been ecstatic, but this was when she really went over the edge. As Mother's Day became more popular around the US, and other countries began implementing it as a holiday as well, Anne became filled with anger. Instead of honoring her mother, people were only honoring their own mothers.
Those bastards!
Jarvis then bugged the leaders of the town where she grew up to build a shrine to her mother. Despite her anger and unpleasant attitude, the townspeople were happy to do so since the Jarvis family had been such an important asset to them before and after the civil war. To this day the Jarvis house and shrine are visited by tourists from around the country. Anna thought this would increase awareness about the real reason Mother's Day was implemented.
Instead she became upset when she realized how much money florists and greeting card makers were making off of the holiday. Anna then tried to claim rights to the phrase "Mother's Day," so she could prevent card makers from creating Mother's Day cards, or so she could at least make sure her mother's name was mentioned on the inside.
In the, end poor mad Anna Jarvis ended up broke (she spent her inheritance on legal fees raising money to claim rights to Mother's Day) and in a sanitarium for she had gone completely nuts.
In fact the only reason she was able to afford a place to live at all was because the florists she hated helped to support her. Whether this was because they felt they owed it to her for helping them make a profit or to keep her quiet we will never know.
The point of this sad little story is this. Next time you are admiring the plate with a handprint on it that your three year old made you, or putting the homemade card your 23 year old son created on the fridge because he's broke and living in your basement, or just able to read a book in peace in the bath tub because your family was nice enough to shut up for Mother's Day, remember to say a little prayer and say thanks to every mom's favorite crazy bitch, Miss Anna Jarvis.
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