BUT DON’T LET THAT STOP YOU FROM BUYING TACKY CRAP FOR YOUR MOM

I didn’t think I would stumble upon a feel-bad story about Mother’s Day, but here goes. It turns out that the woman who invented the modern version of Mother’s Day, Anna Jarvis, was so horrified by the crass commercialization of the holiday that she spent 40 years of her life trying to rid the special day of cards and flowers and presents in order to take back what she thought of as the real meaning of Mother’s Day, which she had intended to be a quiet day to honor your mom in church. After tirelessly campaigning for over ten years to have a special day recognized for the world’s moms, it took only a few short years of crass marketing to drive Jarvis to try to reclaim the holiday. She even went so far as to incorporate the Mother’s Day International Association and tried to copyright the date. Needless to say, her struggle wasn’t quite successful. After spending her entire family’s inheritance trying to undo the damage to Mother’s Day -- and wasting about 40 years of her life -- Anna Jervis died in 1948, in poverty and without success. (BBC)