• THE first Mother’s Day was celebrated in 1908. Anna Jarvis honored her mother Ann Jarvis with a memorial. Ann Jarvis had started a committee in 1868 to establish ‘Mother’s Friendship Day’. Her motivation had been to reunite families after the Civil War. She died in 1905, before Mother’s Day became a holiday.
• Mother’s Day became a recognized holiday in 1914 in the United States.
• Americans spend $14.6 billion on gifts on Mother’s Day, including $671 million on cards and $1.9 billion on flowers.
• Carnations are very popular flowers for Mother’s Day and are thought to be made from the tears of Jesus’ mother (Mary) when she wept at his feet the day He was crucified. Wearing a colored carnation on Mother’s Day indicates that a person’s mother is living. A white carnation means that a person’s mother is dead.
• There are about 122.5 million phone calls on Mother’s Day, making it one of the busiest phone days of the year.
• The U.S. National Restaurant Association reports that Mother’s Day is the year’s most popular holiday for eating out.
• Although the U.S. spends more money than any other country on health care as well as on maternal care, it is more dangerous to give birth in the U.S. than in 49 other countries, including Kuwait, Bulgaria, and South Korea.
• There are an estimated 85.4 million mothers in the United States. There are about 2 billion moms in the world.
• Mothers do about 88 percent of laundry in the U.S. This equals 330 loads of laundry and 5,300 articles of clothing per year. The least favorite job for moms is vacuuming the stairs.
• Even though motherhood is becoming less popular, a majority of women still become mothers. Modern moms are more likely to be more educated, single, and older.
• In the Bible, Eve is credited with being the ‘Mother of All the Living.’
Source: 57 Interesting Facts about Mothers | FactRetriever.com
