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Why The Creator of Mother's Day Got So Mad About Mothers' Day · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the
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Speaker 1: show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for
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Speaker 1: tuning in, and happy belated Mother's Day to all the
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Speaker 1: mothers out there. There's a super producer, Max.
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Speaker 2: Ben Noel, you.
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Speaker 3: Know, and you're my brother from another mother. Both of you,
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Speaker 3: the both of yous gonna lump you into that fun
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Speaker 3: alliterative rhyming phrase.
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Speaker 1: We're also in typical ridiculous history fashion doing a show
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Speaker 1: about a holiday several days after it occurred.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
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Speaker 3: I take it back. A brother from another mother isn't
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Speaker 3: really a literative at all. It's just more of a
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Speaker 3: rhyming thing. It's got a nice internal rhyme, it rolls
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Speaker 3: off the tongue and has a good mouth feel, But
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Speaker 3: alliterative it is not. Ben, We're here again talking about
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Speaker 3: a holiday that was started with all great intention. Like
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Speaker 3: many holidays, you know, whether it be to honor a
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Speaker 3: deity of some sort, perhaps a member of the human species,
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Speaker 3: such as a mother or a father, and then you know, typically,
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Speaker 3: like the way of most holidays, we see the co
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Speaker 3: opting by interests, special interest groups aka corporations and people
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Speaker 3: that want to make money off of stuff like this.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's a very well intentioned event that the
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Speaker 1: best way to say it is the creator of Mother's
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Speaker 1: Day has a very complex relationship with Mother's Day.
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Speaker 4: Right.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, let's introduce Mother Jarvis. That's the street name for
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Speaker 1: Anne Reeves Jarvis. She is a homemaker in Appalachia. She
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Speaker 1: teaches Sunday school and Anne is born in eighteen thirty two.
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Speaker 1: She lives a long, full life. She is an activist.
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Speaker 1: She's a radical in her.
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Speaker 3: Way, like Ninja Turtles radical or like extreme. Well, I
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Speaker 3: guess that could be applied to the same.
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Speaker 1: She's bodacious.
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Speaker 3: She's bodacious. Yes, she hangs ten. But she's also a
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Speaker 3: cowabungo tour she's an activist.
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Speaker 2: You're right.
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Speaker 3: This is something in a post Civil war era that
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Speaker 3: she has decided that she wants to place some emphasis
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Speaker 3: on honoring the work of mothers, you know, while we
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Speaker 3: the men were away. You know, it's the same thing
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Speaker 3: like Rosie the Riveter and all that stuff, like the
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Speaker 3: idea of holding down the fort while the young men
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Speaker 3: are away fighting and potentially dying during the war.
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Speaker 1: So let's give mothers their due. Yeah, and let's also
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Speaker 1: educate them. Let's help them. Let's help mothers, especially impoverished
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Speaker 1: mothers in Appalachia. Let's help them be set up for success.
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Speaker 1: She was very concerned about the perilously high infant mortality rate.
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Speaker 1: There were very, very serious problems that predated the Civil War,
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Speaker 1: but they were exacerbated by that bloody conflict. She also
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Speaker 1: organized women's brigades. She encouraged women to help each other out,
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Speaker 1: regardless whether they were fighting for the Union or the Confederacy.
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Speaker 1: And then she start she proposed something called a Mother's
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Speaker 1: Friendship Day to promote peace between former Union and Confederate families.
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Speaker 1: Now that's a tall milkshake. There's a lot of blood
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Speaker 1: on the hands there, no.
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Speaker 3: Question, And just to not really walk back what I said,
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Speaker 3: but I mean, she did want to highlight, you know,
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Speaker 3: how important the work of mothers and women were during
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Speaker 3: this time. But to your point, Ben, it really was
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Speaker 3: much more of a functional, organizing kind of effort, wasn't
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Speaker 3: it like to provide resources to help you curtail some
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Speaker 3: of these shocking statistics.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and we do want to note this is very important.
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Speaker 1: It's kind of like a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel. Or
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Speaker 1: a story of royals. The person we're talking about, Mother Jarvis,
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Speaker 1: full name Anne Maria Reeves Jarvis. She is different. She's
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Speaker 1: a different person entirely from her daughter, Anna Marie Jarvis,
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Speaker 1: who will come up later. So Anne is the mom
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Speaker 1: and Anna is the daughter. We've got to introduce a
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Speaker 1: third person here, a second woman that was very influential
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Speaker 1: in the founding and Mother's day.
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Speaker 3: Julia Ward Howe a poet and she knew it. Also
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Speaker 3: a reformer. During the Civil War, she was an active
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Speaker 3: volunteer in the very important and new US Sanitary Commission.
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Speaker 3: This was in order to provide sterilization hygienic environments in hospitals,
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Speaker 3: to make sure that folks who were sick and wounded
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Speaker 3: from injuries and war conditions were taken care of properly,
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Speaker 3: and that going into a hospital wasn't in and of itself,
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Speaker 3: a death sentence. If you go into a hospital with
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Speaker 3: a severe wound or illness and it's not been cleaned
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Speaker 3: or it's not been you know, sterilized, you could emerge
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Speaker 3: from that hospital worse than you came in, or not
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Speaker 3: emerge at all.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, it can get infected, You can intercepsist all kinds
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Speaker 1: of nasty things can happen. In eighteen sixty one, Julia
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Speaker 1: Ward Howe also writes the famous Civil War anthem, the
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Speaker 1: Battle Hymn of the Republic, and was talking briefly, who
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Speaker 1: was I think it was our how Robert Evans on Twitter,
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Speaker 1: old friend of the show.
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Speaker 2: He just you guys wild.
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Speaker 1: He was on Twitter, and I think he must have
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Speaker 1: just overheard this song because he all he posted, without
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Speaker 1: much of an explanation, was the Battle Hymn of the Republic.
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Speaker 1: Has no right to slap this hard.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it kind of a banker. And she wrote it.
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Speaker 1: It gets published February of eighteen sixty two, and then
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Speaker 1: she does another predecessor of Mother's Day In eighteen seventy,
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Speaker 1: Julia Ward Howe says, we need a Mother's.
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Speaker 2: Day for peace.
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Speaker 1: It's just celebrating the idea of peace, celebrating the idea
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Speaker 1: that there could be a future without.
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Speaker 3: War totally and let's just be you know, of course,
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Speaker 3: mothers are the source of all life, of human life.
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Speaker 3: This is an obvious, no brainer statement, but one that
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Speaker 3: I think often gets overlooked. So it makes sense to
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Speaker 3: kind of feature the idea of the mother, you know,
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Speaker 3: as a central kind of force of creation as opposed
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Speaker 3: to death and destruction, of a counter to some of
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Speaker 3: the horrifying conditions of war. So she kind of put out,
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Speaker 3: I guess, sort of a not really a manifesto, more
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Speaker 3: of a declaration, a proclamation literally, called the Mother's Day
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Speaker 3: Proclamation in eighteen seventy. She felt that mothers had the
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Speaker 3: power to prevent war, you know, just through their actions
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Speaker 3: and through the way they raised their children and sort
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Speaker 3: of the ideals that they instill into their into their offspring.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, like when jay Z's mom told him to not
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Speaker 1: talk trash about nas so much. Moms can stop stuff.
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Speaker 1: Moms exercise a great power over the world, and it's
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Speaker 1: it's a noble thing for Julia Ward how to recognize
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Speaker 1: right and to leverage and her version of Mother's Day
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Speaker 1: was actually stuck around in a bunch of cities, in
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Speaker 1: Boston in particular, for three decades, but in the years
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Speaker 1: leading up to World War One it kind of petered out,
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Speaker 1: and there it stayed until nineteen oh seven. From right
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Speaker 1: before World War One till around nineteen oh seven, there
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Speaker 1: wasn't really a Mother's Day. People just hopefully people were
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Speaker 1: just nice to their moms every.
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Speaker 3: Day, one would hope and enter our tertiary hero here,
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Speaker 3: I guess the aforementioned Anna M. Jarvis of Philadelphia, the
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Speaker 3: daughter of Mother Jarvis, the og Mother's Day banner bearer.
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Speaker 3: I guess you could call a standard bearer, right, Anna M. Jarvis.
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Speaker 3: After her mother had passed in nineteen o six, Jarvis
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Speaker 3: the younger, she decided to memorialize her mother's life and
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Speaker 3: works by campaigning for a national recognition of a Mother's
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Speaker 3: Day of a sort. She said that she hoped and
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Speaker 3: prayed that someone sometime will found a memorial Mother's Day
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Speaker 3: commemorating her for the matchless service she renders to humanity
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Speaker 3: in every field of life because, and Jarvis said, she
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Speaker 3: is entitled to it.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and we're getting we're getting a lot of this
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Speaker 1: from the Forgotten History of Mother's Day by Heidi stone Hill.
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Speaker 1: And there are a couple other sources we don't want
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Speaker 1: to shout out quite yet because they might spoil the turn.
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Speaker 2: There was a turn here. There's always a turn.
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Speaker 3: We sort of foreshadow of the turn a little bit,
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Speaker 3: you know, you could kind of figure out on your own.
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Speaker 3: Because this is why we can't have nice things.
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Speaker 1: So Ada his ideas were less about public service and
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Speaker 1: more about just saying, hey, moms are the hardest working
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Speaker 1: of all people. Let's at least to acknowledge that. And
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Speaker 1: she went on a one woman campaign. She was one
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Speaker 1: woman army, writing to everybody, sending telegrams, showing up at
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Speaker 1: the offices of public figures and saying, do you have
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Speaker 1: time to sit down for a second, you know, how's
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Speaker 1: your mom?
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Speaker 2: Et cetera.
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Speaker 1: And she spoke widely to groups large and small. She
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Speaker 1: paid for all of this. She didn't have a huge
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Speaker 1: support network at first. She made zines basically the the
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Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds equivalent of zine's booklets about She was
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Speaker 1: a pamphleteer, right, a pamphleteer booklets about Mother's Day. She
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Speaker 1: herself had no children of her own.
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Speaker 2: I think that's interesting. I mean, you know, that doesn't
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Speaker 2: really matter.
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Speaker 3: I think she perhaps decided that she was going to
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Speaker 3: focus her energies into this kind of crusade, you know,
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Speaker 3: I mean, we don't have any information as to whether
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Speaker 3: there were any outs, you know, any I knew any
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Speaker 3: circumstances that led to her not having children, But it
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Speaker 3: sure seemed like whether that was the case or not,
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Speaker 3: she put that effort that would have gone into braising
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Speaker 3: children into this effort. I think that orialized her mother,
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Speaker 3: and to memorialize and honor mothers everywhere.
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Speaker 2: I think that's one way to look at it.
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Speaker 1: I mean, even now in twenty twenty three, there's a bout,
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Speaker 1: there's a lot of very real, lazy prejudice against people
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Speaker 1: who for one reason or do not one reason or another,
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Speaker 1: do not have children. And it's it's pretty gross. It
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Speaker 1: was even worse back then, you know, when you're a woman,
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Speaker 1: and it just I mean, I just want to acknowledge
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Speaker 1: that because I'm sure very many ridiculous historians listening today
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Speaker 1: have experienced that prejudice. It's an ugly thing, and so
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Speaker 1: she probably was judged in her in her time.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, terms like old maid and stuff, you know what
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Speaker 3: I mean. Like it was, it was inherently there was
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Speaker 3: a bias against women that didn't have children, because the
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Speaker 3: assumption was that either they you know, couldn't and that
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Speaker 3: that othered them some way, or they were choosing not
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Speaker 3: to and we're therefore selfish in some way, shape or form.
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Speaker 3: And nowadays, of course, you know, women can have children
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Speaker 3: and also be professional and do all of the things
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Speaker 3: and push for these types of campaigns and also raise families.
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Speaker 3: This is very much part of, you know, the way
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Speaker 3: things have moved, and I think there's less of this
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Speaker 3: attitude around, but.
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Speaker 2: It's still there.
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Speaker 1: It's still very much I can tell you it's still
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Speaker 1: very much there. And you don't have to have children
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Speaker 1: to be a good person, No, And having children does
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Speaker 1: not inherently make you a good person.
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Speaker 2: Does But.
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Speaker 1: We just wanted to acknowledge this. You know, Anna is
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Speaker 1: going is going through some rough stuff, but she perseveres.
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Speaker 1: May nineteen oh eight, she creates the first official Mother's Day,
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Speaker 1: or her version of Mother's Day, at a church in Grafton,
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Speaker 1: West Virginia, and then at a department store in Philadelphia.
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Speaker 1: Imagine how huge this is for the department store if
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Speaker 1: you think about it, they're the first people to get
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Speaker 1: in on the monetization of Mother's Day.
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Speaker 2: Wow, that might have been the beginning of the end.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, as far as the you know, more altruistic version
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Speaker 3: of Mother's Day was concerned.
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Speaker 2: But it also makes sense.
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Speaker 3: You know, department stores in those days were very much
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Speaker 3: a rallying place, you know, for the community to kind
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Speaker 3: of come together. You had your like soda fountains and
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Speaker 3: all of that stuff. And you know, it was really
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Speaker 3: just kind of a place where you would go to
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Speaker 3: be seen and to see other people in the community.
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Speaker 3: So it certainly made sense, but it unfortunately kind of
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Speaker 3: led to some negative consequences.
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Speaker 1: One hundred percent. Yeah, and her campaign is successful, Politicians
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Speaker 1: and newspapers start picking it up. It's increasingly in the
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Speaker 1: zeitgeist of America. It all leads to nineteen fourteen when
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Speaker 1: President Woodrow Wilson calls Mother's Day a way to recognize
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Speaker 1: that tender genental lawMy the mothers of America.
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Speaker 2: And also screw you Woodrow Wilson.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, also Woodrow Wilson, not the best, not the best.
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Speaker 1: Thank you Max with the facts of.
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Speaker 2: Phones and he drops in the knowledge.
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Speaker 4: Just for you.
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Speaker 2: So good, there we go.
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Speaker 3: No, let's put it in, yes, Max, Max with the
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Speaker 3: eternal beef against Woodrow Wilson, who was sort of a
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Speaker 3: human And we already are starting to see kind of
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Speaker 3: different philosophies on Mother's Day emerge. You know what is
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Speaker 3: what we we we we know the original intent with
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Speaker 3: Mother Jarvis was very quite literally to provide resources and
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Speaker 3: support for mothers who were bearing the brunt of you know,
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Speaker 3: raising the family while men were away with very little help,
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Speaker 3: with very little resources, often in dire poverty and difficult
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Speaker 3: situations involving you know, infant mortality and lack of healthcare.
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Speaker 3: So initially the whole idea was very much about providing
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Speaker 3: some of these things. It then kind of maybe became
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Speaker 3: a little bit more about just sort of like a
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Speaker 3: raising awareness for the amazing work that mothers do, the
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Speaker 3: gentle silent army of Windrow Wilson's quote there, or tender
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Speaker 3: gentle army rather, they're not silent necessarily. But then we
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Speaker 3: start to see it kind of that co opting that
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Speaker 3: we're talking about, really, you know, taking those philosophies and
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Speaker 3: kind of yeah, I don't know, grinding him into the
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Speaker 3: dirt a little bit.
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Speaker 1: Well capitalized on them, right, that's the worst part, right.
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Speaker 3: I guess maybe being a little harsh, but sometimes when
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Speaker 3: you do capitalize on things, you sort of suck the goodness,
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Speaker 3: right right, Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Because and we'll get to some interesting facts and statistics
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Speaker 1: here at the end, but yeah, it starts in a
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Speaker 1: really good place. Both Jarvis's and Julia Howe are making
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Speaker 1: They're doing tremendous big things. By nineteen twelve, a lot
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Speaker 1: of other churches and towns and states are holding Mother's
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Speaker 1: Day celebrations of their own, and Anna Jarvis has established
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Speaker 1: the Mother's Day International Association. But almost immediately she gets
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Speaker 1: disillusioned because the holiday becomes all about swag. You buy
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Speaker 1: printed cards for your mom, You buy flowers. Hey, mom,
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Speaker 1: here's another gift, here's some candy. It becomes an expectation,
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Speaker 1: It becomes normalized that there must be these things bought
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Speaker 1: and sold as part of this. And Jarvis feels like
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Speaker 1: the holiday has gotten away from her. You know, she
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Speaker 1: feels like the lady who created the original Monopoly game.
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Speaker 1: She's like, why are these people taking my idea and
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Speaker 1: soullessly making money off it? So she starts campaigning against
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Speaker 1: Mother's Day profiteers.
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Speaker 3: All the while, you know, candymakers, flores, greeting card companies
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Speaker 3: are looking and.
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Speaker 2: Saying, what, who us?
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Speaker 3: We just want your mothers to have nice things, you
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Speaker 3: know that you buy from us exclusively.
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Speaker 2: It's process. She sued everybody.
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Speaker 1: She called them charlatans, bandits, pirates, racketeers, kidnappers, and other
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Speaker 1: termites that would undermine with their greed. One of the finest,
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Speaker 1: noblest and truest movements and celebrations. She's still coming out
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Speaker 1: of her own pocket for this too.
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Speaker 3: She's so well and too great detriment to her personal wealth, right,
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Speaker 3: I mean she she did. You know that she did
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Speaker 3: have a quite a significant inheritance, and it dwindles significantly
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Speaker 3: because she was paying all these legal fees. So it
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Speaker 3: really does kind of show you how difficult it is
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Speaker 3: to fight city hall, you know, in these kinds of situations,
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Speaker 3: because it's a free market economy. Man, they're not doing
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Speaker 3: anything wrong. You can't prove that they co opted something exactly,
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Speaker 3: can you.
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Speaker 2: I mean, it must be difficult.
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Speaker 1: You can't tell people, like how do you tell people
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Speaker 1: that they can't like their mom on a specific day?
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Speaker 1: You know what I mean? Like, how do you legislate
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Speaker 1: against that?
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Speaker 2: I mean?
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Speaker 3: And I'm sure they're literally the argument that the lawyers
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Speaker 3: you know, for these companies were making, like like is
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Speaker 3: it wrong to give your sweet mother a box of sweeties,
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Speaker 3: you know.
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Speaker 2: And chocolate confections?
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Speaker 3: Is it wrong to watch your mother to have a
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Speaker 3: beautiful bouquet of flowers representing her vibrant spirits?
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Speaker 2: You know? Like I could just picture the eye rolls.
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Speaker 1: You know, I know, and we want to shout out
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Speaker 1: Sarah Pruitt over at history dot com why the founder
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Speaker 1: of Mother's Day turned against it. Look, Anna Jarvis went
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Speaker 1: super hard in the pain on this stuff.
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Speaker 2: She would conventions.
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Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty five, there was this organization called the
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Speaker 1: American War Mothers and they used Mother's Day as a
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Speaker 1: fundraising opportunity, and they were selling carnations at this convention.
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Speaker 1: Anna Jarvis doesn't just crash the convention in Philly, she
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Speaker 1: gets arrested for raising a ruckus for disturbing the peace.
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Speaker 1: She also takes shots at first Lady Eleanor Roosevelt for
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Speaker 1: using Mother's Day as a fundraising opportunity. She wants all
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Speaker 1: the smoke, basically.
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Speaker 2: So basically, but that's the thing.
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Speaker 3: Though you put out an idea like that into the world,
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Speaker 3: it's gonna happen. And short of I don't know, arguing
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Speaker 3: for some sort of copyright infringement, which you can't really
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Speaker 3: do in this case because it's meant to be a
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Speaker 3: recognized holiday for all. So I don't really know what
19:57
Speaker 3: leg she had to stand on here in terms of
19:59
Speaker 3: her arm. It seems like at the end of the day,
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Speaker 3: she was kind of just shouting into the abyss.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and she did have a copyright argument, right, that's
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Speaker 1: what she took to court. But it's very easy to
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Speaker 1: get around that stuff, you know, And so she's repeatedly
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Speaker 1: incredibly frustrated with this. By the nineteen forties, she is
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Speaker 1: more or less disowned the concept of the holiday altogether.
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Speaker 1: She is lobbying the government to see it remove from
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Speaker 1: the calendar, but no one's listening. Mother's Day is it's
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Speaker 1: a gold mine man, and businesses begin to count on
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Speaker 1: it in their balance sheets, so they're not going to
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Speaker 1: let it go.
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Speaker 3: Speaking of the copyright claim, didn't wasn't like the apostrophe
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Speaker 3: moved around a little bit in in an.
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Speaker 2: Effort to get around that. Yeah, this is interesting.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, she she claims copyright on the phrase second
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Speaker 1: Sunday in May Mother's Day mother mot a h R
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Speaker 1: apostrophe s And she's like a possessive, Right, I'm gonna
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Speaker 1: ensue anybody who uses this without my permission. So yeah,
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Speaker 1: like you said, people said, all right, that's fine, we'll
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Speaker 1: use the plural possessive, which is just moving the apostrophe.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, day for all mothers as opposed to singular the
21:22
Speaker 3: day that belongs to mother, right, tricksy tricksy stuff. But
21:28
Speaker 3: but I mean I don't love it, but it is.
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Speaker 3: You can't own those words exactly right. Dungeons and dragons
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Speaker 3: would call it lawful evil. That's right, because I mean
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Speaker 3: her copyright existed on the phrase second Sunday in May
21:43
Speaker 3: Mother's Day. If there's a rhyme there. She didn't necessarily
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Speaker 3: hold the legal, you know, per strings for the concept
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Speaker 3: of a day for mothers. You can't really do that.
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Speaker 3: That's like owning a baseball cap, you know, yeah, or
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Speaker 3: like the fidget spinner whatever.
21:59
Speaker 1: Right, And this is not to say that Anna didn't try.
22:04
Speaker 1: You can find a Newsweek article from nineteen forty four
22:07
Speaker 1: that claims she had thirty three separate pending lawsuits that year.
22:18
Speaker 1: By this point in time, she has lived a long life.
22:21
Speaker 1: She is eighty years old. She's got a lot of
22:25
Speaker 1: health problems that come with old age. She's not doing
22:29
Speaker 1: well financially because she spent so much of her inheritance
22:32
Speaker 1: on these battles. She is in an assisted living space
22:37
Speaker 1: in a sanatorium in Philly. And there were we found
22:42
Speaker 1: a lot of rumors. I guess you could call them
22:46
Speaker 1: our speculation that companies in the floral and card industries
22:51
Speaker 1: secretly paid to take care of her. But if you
22:55
Speaker 1: talk to historians like Kathleen and Dalini, then you see
23:01
Speaker 1: no story and has been able to verify this. People
23:05
Speaker 1: just kind of say, hey, be nice if that were true.
23:08
Speaker 1: We don't have proof. It might just be a nice story.
23:12
Speaker 1: But we do know that even at the end of
23:14
Speaker 1: her life, she was still she was still fighting Mother's Day,
23:18
Speaker 1: like on a door to door basis right.
23:21
Speaker 3: I hate that though, man, you know, I mean, it's
23:23
Speaker 3: just because she did have such good intention. She was
23:26
Speaker 3: carrying on this legacy of you know, her mother's work
23:29
Speaker 3: before her, and spent her whole life just you know,
23:33
Speaker 3: the rest of her life, the part of her life
23:35
Speaker 3: that should have been her being taken care of, you know,
23:38
Speaker 3: when when she spent all this time trying to take
23:39
Speaker 3: care of other mothers. Instead she spent it under duress
23:44
Speaker 3: and feeling as though her legacy had been like Sully,
23:46
Speaker 3: this thing that she had worked so hard to create.
23:49
Speaker 1: And she passed away of heart failure in November of
23:53
Speaker 1: nineteen forty eight, But Mother's Day continued, and Mother's Day
23:57
Speaker 1: is not the creation of any single individual. Really, it's
24:01
Speaker 1: the creation of multiple women. And the modern Mother's Day
24:07
Speaker 1: is still yes, is it monetized, is it commodified? Of
24:11
Speaker 1: course it is, But that doesn't necessarily make it bad.
24:16
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean that you have to participate financially, you
24:20
Speaker 1: know what I mean. There are I'm sure, I'm sure
24:24
Speaker 1: there are thousands and thousands of moms listening right now
24:27
Speaker 1: who are thinking, I don't know, I just want my
24:30
Speaker 1: kid to call me, you know what I mean?
24:32
Speaker 3: Absolutely, yeah, call your mom, Call your mom, Call your mom,
24:36
Speaker 3: because you just you never know when the last time
24:39
Speaker 3: you're going to be able to speak to her.
24:41
Speaker 2: We'll be That's true, It's very true.
24:44
Speaker 3: Well today, you know, Mother's Day it does exist.
24:49
Speaker 2: It is a calendar day.
24:51
Speaker 3: Which day is it? I know we missed it by
24:53
Speaker 3: a little bit here with Sunday, May fourteenth, And that's
24:57
Speaker 3: always the day that it is. It's not like the
24:58
Speaker 3: third Sunday of the mon there's something like that in
25:01
Speaker 3: in in May.
25:02
Speaker 2: It's always the thirteen, always the second Sunday. It is
25:05
Speaker 2: the same. Okay, So it's one of those second Sunday.
25:07
Speaker 2: That's that.
25:07
Speaker 3: That's why I'm always confused because it's like there's no
25:10
Speaker 3: hard date associated with it.
25:12
Speaker 1: That's always a weird one to me too. You know
25:14
Speaker 1: what's another Thanksgiving?
25:16
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanksgivingest one, because calendars are a human invention and
25:26
Speaker 4: they're therefore imperfect.
25:28
Speaker 1: But yes, you can also find Hey, it's not just
25:31
Speaker 1: the US. You can also find other observances of Mother's
25:36
Speaker 1: Day in places like Ethiopia. You can find it in Thailand,
25:42
Speaker 1: where Mother's Day is celebrated in August on the birthday
25:45
Speaker 1: of the Queen right and it's tied to the royal family.
25:48
Speaker 1: You can find it all over the world because everybody
25:52
Speaker 1: can agree despite all the differences that the human species has,
25:56
Speaker 1: we're all big fans of moms in general, our own
26:01
Speaker 1: mothers in particular. And Noel, I found that I've got
26:05
Speaker 1: some silly statistics with Mother's Day, at least in the
26:11
Speaker 1: United States. And I bet, I bet you've heard this one.
26:14
Speaker 1: This is probably it's probably my favorite one. Forty percent
26:19
Speaker 1: of adults will take their mom out to a restaurant
26:22
Speaker 1: on Mother's Day, and for a long time it was
26:29
Speaker 1: for a long time it was considered the busiest day
26:31
Speaker 1: in the restaurant industry. Yeah, yeah, for sure, it's the
26:35
Speaker 1: second busiest. Actually only Valentine's Day.
26:39
Speaker 2: Is a bigger one. Yeah, and Valentine's Day is a
26:42
Speaker 2: whole story onto it.
26:43
Speaker 3: So in terms of the infiltration by greeting card companies
26:48
Speaker 3: and you know, wine makers and what have you, you know,
26:51
Speaker 3: chocolate tears, all of that stuff. It's also often used
26:54
Speaker 3: as a day for launching political causes associated with feminism.
27:01
Speaker 3: For example, in nineteen sixty eight, Corretta Scott King, of course,
27:04
Speaker 3: the wife of Martin Luther King Junior, hosted a march
27:09
Speaker 3: in support of underprivileged women and children on Mother's Day.
27:13
Speaker 1: Which I think, you know what, we cannot speak for, uh,
27:17
Speaker 1: cannot speak for Anna ourselves, but I like to think
27:21
Speaker 1: she would be okay with that kind of that one. Yeah,
27:23
Speaker 1: that would be okay because they're not selling T shirts
27:26
Speaker 1: or anything. We know that it's such a big business.
27:30
Speaker 1: This statistic blew me away. In twenty twenty one, just
27:34
Speaker 1: that one year, American consumers spent an estimated twenty eight
27:38
Speaker 1: point one billion dollars on Mother's Day and Mother's Day
27:43
Speaker 1: stuff like what.
27:44
Speaker 2: Kind of what kind of flowers are they buying? Are
27:50
Speaker 2: they buying people? Are they getting their mom? Or cars? Yeah, unclear, unclear.
27:56
Speaker 3: You know what kind of flowers I've been buying lately, Ben,
27:58
Speaker 3: what's that lego flower? Oh? The lego orkid is awesome, fantastic.
28:03
Speaker 3: We have like the succulents. We have like some kind
28:06
Speaker 3: of spring bouquets. They never die, they'll never let you down,
28:10
Speaker 3: They'll never make you feel like a slacker for either
28:12
Speaker 3: overwatering or underwatering. I'm still kind of trying to get
28:15
Speaker 3: the hang of plants and keeping them alive. But you know,
28:19
Speaker 3: there's still time.
28:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know.
28:20
Speaker 1: I I have a bit of a green thumb. I
28:23
Speaker 1: have had the same and they're called a money tree.
28:27
Speaker 1: I've had the same one since I was an intern
28:29
Speaker 1: at How Stuff Works. Nice old Ben Benn is still
28:32
Speaker 1: kicking it, and I'm starting a green space at the
28:36
Speaker 1: rooftop of my new place. You guys are definitely invited.
28:40
Speaker 2: I can't wait to check it out. I'm really excited.
28:42
Speaker 3: I'm actually about to get some landscaping work done in
28:44
Speaker 3: my backyard with all native plants. I've been assured by
28:48
Speaker 3: the folks who help me design it that they and
28:51
Speaker 3: I won't have to do much to them because they're
28:53
Speaker 3: gonna thrive already. Just like in this environment, so really
28:56
Speaker 3: looking forward to that and also similarly would love to
28:59
Speaker 3: have you all over for like a Fourth of July
29:01
Speaker 3: barbecue situation. And didn't want to end on any kind
29:04
Speaker 3: of down or note, but I just want to put
29:06
Speaker 3: out a just a you know word to say I
29:09
Speaker 3: miss my mother, who lost my mother a year ago,
29:13
Speaker 3: roughly to the day, and first Mother's Day without my mom, Sandra.
29:18
Speaker 3: So love you Sandra, and miss yet and happy Mother's Day.
29:22
Speaker 1: I'd like to say just a few brief words to
29:26
Speaker 1: a lot of people. Mother's Day can be tough when
29:30
Speaker 1: your mom has passed on, you know. Mother's Day can
29:34
Speaker 1: be tough when you know your family is maybe at odds,
29:41
Speaker 1: maybe you don't speak to your kids, maybe you and
29:43
Speaker 1: your mom butt heads. Before my mother passed away also
29:51
Speaker 1: quite recently, I was incredibly fortunate, and I like to
29:55
Speaker 1: think that I knew that my mother was a very
30:01
Speaker 1: very kind, beautiful woman. I don't think I ever really
30:06
Speaker 1: had a fight with her, which is nuts. She just
30:09
Speaker 1: she would just tell me she well, she was a
30:12
Speaker 1: teacher for so many years, you know, like in your
30:15
Speaker 1: mom was also teaching people, but.
30:16
Speaker 2: She was we fought all the time, so I'm jealous.
30:21
Speaker 1: I think she had just like because even though I'm
30:24
Speaker 1: an only child, because I was essentially if your mom's
30:27
Speaker 1: a teacher, you were one of twenty eight to thirty
30:29
Speaker 1: two children's awesome year.
30:32
Speaker 3: But it's also like a beautiful thing to I mean, teaching,
30:35
Speaker 3: as we've talked about many times on this shows, is
30:38
Speaker 3: such a gift, you know, to be able to take
30:40
Speaker 3: what you've learned and to pass that on to people
30:43
Speaker 3: who can then use it to literally change their lives
30:45
Speaker 3: or you know, guide the trajectory of their life. And
30:48
Speaker 3: some of my mom's students, specifically singing my mom was
30:50
Speaker 3: a singing teacher, have gone on to have great careers
30:53
Speaker 3: in great opera houses and stuff, and wasn't the path
30:56
Speaker 3: that I chose. But I'm just I'm very proud of
30:58
Speaker 3: her and the way that she's change these people's lives.
31:01
Speaker 3: And I'm sure that you see that with your mom's students,
31:03
Speaker 3: and you feel the same way.
31:05
Speaker 1: And we guarantee you, fellow Ridiculous historians, your mom is
31:10
Speaker 1: proud of you. Thanks of course, to our super producer,
31:15
Speaker 1: mister Max Williams. Hey, thanks to missus Williams. Good job
31:19
Speaker 1: on the kids. Thanks thanks to Alex Williams, I mean,
31:23
Speaker 1: thanks to everybody. I think we're ending on a good
31:26
Speaker 1: note here.
31:26
Speaker 2: I think so too. Yeah. No, and thanks to you Ben,
31:28
Speaker 2: my brother from another mother, no question about it. Call
31:31
Speaker 2: your mom please do. We'll see you next time, folks.
31:40
Speaker 3: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
31:44
Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.