Though one might assume Mother's Day was invented by the major greeting card companies it was actually around in ancient Greece as a celebration of the mother of the gods.

In the United States Mother's Day was started as a day for social activism and an outcry for peace by Julia Ward Howe after the Civil War. Her attempts to get Mother's Day recognized failed.

Anna Jarvis in 1907 began crusading for a memorial day for women.

Her efforts were in part to honor her own mother who worked to improve sanitary conditions for both sides of the Civil War by organizing Mothers' Work Days.

The first Mother's Day celebration was in Grafton, West Virginia, May 10, 1908 in the church where Anna Jarvis taught Sunday School.

Jarvis would later oppose the commercialization of the holiday.

President Woodrow Wilson declared the first  national Mother's Day in 1914 as a day for Americans to show show the flag in honor of mothers who had lost their sons in war.

Mother's Day is one of the most commercially successful holidays in the United States.