Happy Mother's Day 2017
Find out what date Mother's Day is observed this year! Cover

It's May and Mother's Day is coming up this month. The holiday that celebrates that special person in our lives will be observed in Sunday May 14 in the U.S. Moms are celebrated on the second Sunday of the month. In México, it is quite different and Mother's Day is always on May 10. In 2017 it'll land on a Wednesday. Find out more about the history of the holiday below and tell us what you have planned for this year!

How Did Mother's Day Holiday Start?

As early as the 1850s, Jarvis held Mother's Day work clubs in which issues which progressives of the period saw as key - like the improvement of sanitation and the lowering of infant mortality - were addressed collectively. Her groups also tended to wounded soldiers on both sides of the US Civil War from 1861 to 1865, according to National Geographic. Following the war, Jarvis used the idea to promote accord among former Confederates and Union loyalists, and called for women to play in active role in maintaining peace in the still-fragile union of the United States.

At the time, Jarvis stressed that it was a dedication not to mothers everywhere but rather to the "best" mother -- one's own mother. When Woodrow Wilson made it an official holiday, this was the spelling he used. In time, the plural "Mothers' Day" became accepted as well.

Jarvis ended up becoming a vocal opponent of the holiday she helped bring about. Its transformation into a commercial bonanza bothered her. She began to organize protests and boycotts and threatened others with lawsuits, and attacked first lady Eleanor Roosevelt for raising funds for charities on the holiday. She was even arrested in Philadelphia in 1925 for disturbing the peace after she crashed a convention where the American War Mothers were fundraising.

In the UK, "Mothering Sunday" already existed before Ann Jarvis' campaigns. In Greece, the holiday was adopted on the model of the Orthodox Christian commemoration of the presentation of Jesus Christ to the temple on Feb. 2. Other former Communist nations opt for "International Women's Day" -- originally "International Working Women's Day," a holiday which has gradually lost its labor-themed associations and occurs on March 8.

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