Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Happy Mother's Day


• Who are the mothers of mother's day? Before President Woodrow Wilson made it an official holiday in 1915, Mother's Day wasn't about flowers and cards, but instead it was a tribute to women's peace-making activities. Mother's Day is actually a marriage of two separate campaigns that began during the Civil War. The first version of Mother's Day is attributed to Anna M. Jarvis of West Virginia who participated in Mother's Work Days, in which women's brigades worked to improve critical community sanitation. In 1868, Jarvis established Mother's Friendship Day, which encouraged women to ease tensions between North and South once the war was over. The second mother of Mother's Day was Bostonian Julia Ward Howe, author of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," who called upon all women to band together to abolish war. Her Mothers' Peace Day celebrations took place for several years in Boston and other cities until the end of World War I.

• It's 1912, do you know what gift to buy your mother? Why not a box of chocolates? In 1912, Whitman's Candies put out the very first box of chocolates, Whitman's Sampler, and had instant success. The president at the time, Walter Sharp, inspired by a cross-stitched sampler hanging in his home, created a sampling of the company's best-selling chocolates and more importantly, included the now-famous index showing the filling of each candy. Sharp worked with a skilled employee to create the original cross-stitch sampler that is still featured on Whitman's yellow boxes of chocolates