Whether it’s your own mother or the other important matriarchs in your life, there’s always a reason to show them some extra love. And that reason is coming up.
If you’re paying attention to the calendar, you might have noticed that Mother’s Day is right around the corner, with less than a month to plan the perfect celebration.
Here’s everything you need to know about when to celebrate Mother’s Day, as well as the holiday’s roots.
When is Mother’s Day 2025?
Mother’s Day in the U.S. falls on Sunday, May 11, 2025. It always falls on the second Sunday of May.
What are some Mother’s Day dinner ideas?
Looking to prepare a special meal for Mother’s Day? The Food Network compiled a list of 35 dishes to celebrate the holiday. Here are four plates, with recipe links and total preparation and cook times:
Who founded Mother’s Day? See holiday’s origins
According to USA TODAY reports, Mother’s Day in the United States exists in its current form thanks to a Philadelphia woman named Anna Jarvis.
She was the daughter of Ann Reeves Jarvis, a West Virginia woman known for creating the Mothers’ Day Work Clubs, which provided a place for women to learn about child care strategies. During the Civil War, these clubs became a force of reconciliation as wives of both Confederate and Union soldiers came together.
Anna Jarvis, founder of Mother’s Day — to mark 100 years on May 11.
In May 1908, Anna Jarvis held a service at her late mother’s church in West Virginia, meant to honor all mothers’ sacrifices. This marked the first official celebration of “Mother’s Day.”
In the years that followed, Jarvis helped to elevate the holiday through a letter-writing campaign that pushed other states to adopt the observance. By 1914, President Woodrow Wilson had designated it a national holiday.
It is also noted that Jarvis, in an ironic twist, spent the last year of her life campaigning to abolish the very holiday she founded, upset by the over-commercialization of the holiday. Jarvis launched lawsuits against florists, greeting card manufacturers and other industries before her death in 1948.
What was the original name for Mother’s Day?
Before Wilson designated it as an official holiday, different variations of Mother’s Day were celebrated throughout the years.
The Arizona Republic or azcentral.com online, a USA TODAY Network newspaper, found one of the earliest instances was “Mother’s Friendship Day” in 1868, organized by Ann Reeves Jarvis, the mother of the eventual founder of Mother’s Day. Mothers were encouraged to gather with former Union and Confederate soldiers to promote reconciliation.
Just a few years later, in 1870, Julia Ward Howe, a poet who wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and a reformer from the Civil War era, called for a “Mother’s Day for Peace” to celebrate peace and advocate for the eradication of war.
“We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs,” she wrote in the proclamation. Howe campaigned for a “Mother’s Peace Day” to be held each year on June 2 but was unsuccessful.
Is Mother’s Day celebrated on the same date around the world?
While some countries follow the lead of the United States in marking the day on the second Sunday in May, others have their traditions.
In the United Kingdom, Mother’s Day is celebrated on “Mothering Sunday,” which falls on the fourth Sunday of Lent. In Mexico, Mother’s Day, or Día de las Madres, falls on May 10 yearly.
Contributing reporting: Anna Kaufman, USA TODAY
This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: When is Mother’s Day 2025? Here are 4 dinner ideas for a special meal
