Mother’s Day is often seen today through flowers, cards, family lunches, and quiet greetings sent across distance. In the Philippines, it is widely celebrated every second Sunday of May, a date many Filipinos follow from the American tradition.

But behind the familiar celebration is a deeper story, one shaped not first by commerce, but by grief, public service, peace, and a daughter’s devotion to her mother.

At Russ & Rose, we often return to the language of care: care as memory, care as repetition, care as something quiet and enduring. In The Way We Learned to Care, the idea of care is traced through small inherited gestures. Mother’s Day belongs to that same emotional landscape, where love is often expressed not through spectacle, but through attention.

The beginning of modern Mother’s Day

The modern Mother’s Day began in the United States through the efforts of Anna Jarvis, an American social activist who wanted to honor the memory of her mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis.

Ann was not simply remembered as a mother at home. She had organized women’s groups known as Mothers’ Day Work Clubs, which focused on improving health, hygiene, and community welfare at a time when disease and child mortality were serious realities. Her work reflected a kind of motherhood that extended beyond the household, into the protection and care of a wider community.

This wider understanding of care remains relevant. In What Filipino Tradition Knows About Caring for Skin, care is not treated as vanity or performance. It is treated as usefulness, repetition, comfort, and quiet responsibility, values that echo the earliest spirit of Mother’s Day.

Motherhood, service, and peace

Before Mother’s Day became a holiday, there were earlier movements that connected motherhood with peace. In 1870, Julia Ward Howe, a writer, abolitionist, and peace activist, issued what became known as the Mother’s Day Proclamation. Her vision was not centered on gifts or domestic celebration, but on women gathering across nations to oppose war and protect life.

Although her version of Mother’s Day did not become the holiday most people know today, it showed that the idea of honoring mothers was once closely tied to social responsibility and peace.

This older history gives the celebration more weight. It reminds us that mothering is not only tenderness. It is also protection, advocacy, labor, and the difficult work of holding life together.

Anna Jarvis and the second Sunday of May

After Ann Reeves Jarvis died in 1905, her daughter Anna began a campaign to establish a day dedicated to honoring mothers. The first formal Mother’s Day church service was held on May 10, 1908, at her mother’s church in Grafton, West Virginia. Anna chose the second Sunday of May because it was close to the date of her mother’s death.

For her, the day was meant to be personal and sincere. It was not meant to honor motherhood in an abstract way, but to encourage each person to remember their own mother with gratitude.

Anna Jarvis also chose the white carnation as a symbol of the celebration. It was her mother’s favorite flower, and it came to represent purity, remembrance, and affection. In the early years, Mother’s Day was marked through church services, handwritten letters, family meals, and personal acts of appreciation. The intention was simple: to pause and recognize the quiet labor of mothers, especially the kind that is often unseen.

That idea of pausing is central to the Russ & Rose journal. In The Grace of Time, care becomes less about urgency and more about allowing meaning to unfold slowly. Mother’s Day, at its most honest, asks for the same rhythm.

The holiday becomes official

By 1914, Anna Jarvis’ campaign had succeeded. United States President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation designating the second Sunday of May as Mother’s Day. The proclamation called for the day to be observed as a public expression of love and reverence for mothers.

From there, the celebration spread to other countries, including the Philippines, where American cultural influence helped shape the May observance many Filipinos recognize today.

Yet the history of Mother’s Day carries an irony. Anna Jarvis, the woman who fought to establish the holiday, later became one of its strongest critics. As flowers, greeting cards, restaurants, and commercial promotions became central to the celebration, she felt that the original meaning had been lost. She believed Mother’s Day should remain intimate, thoughtful, and sincere, not reduced to profit or obligation. In her later years, she even campaigned against the holiday’s commercialization.

This tension is familiar in modern culture, where rituals can easily become performative. In Beauty Fatigue Is Real, we explore what happens when care becomes pressure. Mother’s Day carries a similar reminder: meaning is not always found in the loudest gesture.

Mother’s Day in the Philippines

In the Philippines, Mother’s Day has its own layered history. While Filipinos today commonly celebrate it on the second Sunday of May, earlier Philippine observances were connected to December.

Historical accounts note that in 1921, the Ilocos Norte Federation of Women’s Clubs asked for the first Monday of December to be declared Mother’s Day. Later, different Philippine proclamations adjusted the date. In 1988, Proclamation No. 266 declared every second Sunday of May as Mother’s Day and every third Sunday of June as Father’s Day. In 1998, Proclamation No. 58 returned Mother’s Day and Father’s Day to the first Monday of December. Despite this legal history, the May celebration remains the one most widely practiced by Filipino families today.

This makes Mother’s Day in the Philippines both familiar and complex. It is not originally a traditional Filipino holiday, yet it has been warmly absorbed into Filipino family life.

In a culture where mothers, grandmothers, titas, and mother figures often hold families together across generations and distance, the day has found emotional meaning. It has become a moment to honor the women who prepare, endure, provide, forgive, guide, and love in ways that are sometimes quiet, sometimes sacrificial, and often lifelong.

This Filipino understanding of family and care also appears in Before the Mirror, There Was Water, where everyday cleansing becomes a memory of home, refreshment, and small acts passed from one generation to another.

What Mother’s Day asks of us today

To understand the origin of Mother’s Day is to see it with more depth. It began not as a shopping occasion, but as an act of remembrance. It was shaped by women who cared for the sick, advocated for peace, held communities together, and believed that motherhood deserved recognition beyond sentiment.

At its heart, Mother’s Day is an invitation to return to gratitude, not only through gifts, but through presence, words, and care.

Perhaps that is the most meaningful way to celebrate it today. Not by making the day grand, but by making it honest. A message written with care. A meal shared slowly. A call made across distance. A pause offered to someone who has spent much of her life offering care to others.

For all its complicated history, Mother’s Day still asks something very simple of us: to remember the mothering that shaped us, and to honor it while we can.