Mother's Day

====United States====
{{Main|Mother's Day (United States)}}
[[File:Michelle Obama, Jill Biden and Prince Henry.jpg|thumb|left|[[Prince Harry]], [[Michelle Obama]] and [[Jill Biden]] helping children create Mother's Day cards at the [[White House]], 9 May 2013]]
[[File:Mother's day gifts.jpg|thumb|Handmade Mother's Day gifts]]

The United States celebrates Mother's Day on the second Sunday in May. In 1872 [[Julia Ward Howe]] called for women to join in support of disarmament and asked for 2 June 1872, to be established as a "Mother's Day for Peace". Her 1870 "Appeal to womanhood throughout the world" is sometimes referred to as [[Mother's Day Proclamation]]. But Howe's day was not for honouring mothers but for organizing pacifist mothers against war. In the 1880s and 1890s there were several further attempts to establish an American "Mother's Day", but these did not succeed beyond the local level.<ref name=virginia>{{Cite book|title=The family in America: an encyclopedia|chapter=Mother's Day|first=Virginia|last=Bernhard|editor=Joseph M. Hawes |editor2=Elizabeth F. Shores|edition=3, illustrated|publisher=[[ABC-CLIO]]|year=2002|isbn= 978-1576072325|page=714|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=z55xx8_P08UC&pg=PT714}}</ref>

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<!--The current [[Secular holiday|holiday]] was created by [[Anna Jarvis]] in [[Grafton, West Virginia]] in 1908 as a day to honour one's mother.<ref name=vancouversun /> Jarvis wanted to accomplish her mother's dream of making a celebration for all mothers, although the idea did not take off until she enlisted the services of wealthy Philadelphia merchant John Wanamaker, who celebrated it on 8 May 1910 in Bethany Temple Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, PA of which he was the founder. In a letter to the pastor, she said it was, "our first Mother's Day".<ref name=rouvalis>Cristina Rouvalis, [http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08132/880876-85.stm For the mother of Mother's Day, it's just never been right], Cristina Rouvalis, ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'', 11 May 2008.</ref> Jarvis kept promoting the holiday until President Woodrow Wilson made the day an official national holiday in 1914.<ref name=virginia />

The holiday eventually became so highly commercialized that many, including its founder, Anna Jarvis, considered it a "[[Hallmark holiday]]," ''i.e.'' one with an overwhelming commercial purpose. Jarvis eventually ended up opposing the holiday she had helped to create.<ref name=vancouversun /><ref name="newcomer 135–136"/> This economic modernization was inspired by US models and was sponsored by the state. She died in 1948, regretting what had become of her holiday.<ref name=rouvalis />
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In the United States, Mother's Day remains one of the biggest days for sales of flowers, greeting cards, and the like; Mother's Day is also the biggest holiday for long-distance telephone calls.<ref>Barbara Mikkelson, "[http://www.snopes.com/holidays/fathersday/collect.asp We love you – call collect]". Snopes.com. Retrieved 2010.03.08.</ref> Moreover, [[Church service|churchgoing]] is also popular on Mother's Day, yielding the highest [[church attendance]] after Christmas Eve and Easter. Many worshippers celebrate the day with [[carnations]], coloured if the mother is living and white if she is dead.<ref name=":0" /><ref name="Churchgoing">{{cite book |author=J. Ellsworth Kalas |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QQpXwIt3ihAC&q=%22third+only+to+Christmas+Eve+and+Easter%22&pg=PA76 |title=Preaching the Calendar: Celebrating Holidays and Holy Days |publisher=[[Westminster John Knox Press]]|quote=Church attendance on this day is likely to be third only to Christmas Eve and Easter. Some worshipers still celebrate with carnations, colored if the mother is living and white if she is deceased.|date=2009|isbn = 978-0664227142}}</ref>

Mother's Day continues to be one of the most commercially successful U.S. occasions.<ref>{{cite web | title = Mother's Day Dining Fact Sheet | date = 28 April 2006 | publisher = [[National Restaurant Association]] | url = http://www.restaurant.org/Pressroom/Press-Releases/Mother-s-Day-Dining-Fact-Sheet | quote = Mother's Day is the most popular day of the year to dine out, with 38 percent of consumers reporting doing so | access-date = 29 December 2018 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20170627080205/http://www.restaurant.org/Pressroom/Press-Releases/Mother-s-Day-Dining-Fact-Sheet | archive-date = 27 June 2017 | url-status = dead | df = dmy-all }}</ref>

It is possible that the holiday would have withered over time without the support and continuous promotion of the florist industries and other commercial industries. Other Protestant holidays from the same time, such as [[Children's Day]] and [[Temperance Sunday]], do not have the same level of popularity.<ref>Leigh, p. [https://books.google.com/books?id=maF8mTPsJqsC&q=mother%27s+day&pg=PA256 256]</ref>