According to History.com, “The American incarnation of Mother’s Day was created by Anna Jarvis in 1908 and became an official U.S. holiday in 1914. Jarvis would later denounce the holiday’s commercialization and spent the latter part of her life trying to remove it from the calendar.”
Clearly, she failed.
I traced the history of Mother's Day-related advertising in the Colorado Transcript. For the first several years of the holiday’s existence, it was mentioned as a news item, reminding readers to honor their mothers on this newly minted holiday. The first commercial reference that I found was a 1922 advertisement by Robinson’s Book Store, encouraging people to buy Mother's Day cards.
After that, Mother's Day slowly gained traction amongst Golden’s merchants. It began with cards and then expanded into candy, then jewelry, then flowers. The telephone company always suggested that Mother would appreciate a phone call.
By the 1950s, any “female” gift was in play, including clothing, perfume, and labor-saving appliances. By the 1990s, Mother's Day buffets were catching on.
One thing that struck me was the way the mothers depicted in the ads become younger and more glamorous. The generic mothers shown in the 1920s-1940s were distinctly matronly…grandmother age. The moms shown in the 1950s-1970s got younger and younger.
I have a theory about that: I think once merchants discovered that Mother's Day was an opportunity to sell gifts, they expanded the market to include young mothers as well as older ones. That way, it wasn’t just adults honoring their elderly mothers–husbands and children were drawn into the pool of consumers as well.
Happy Mother's Day!
