The Mother’s Day holiday falls on May 10 this year. That’s 95 years from the time that Mother’s Day was officially declared by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914, as an official day of National Observance of Mother’s Day in the U.S. and declaring that it should always be on the second Sunday in May.

The peace proclamation was in protest to the devastation that the nation had experienced during the American Civil War. She wanted mothers everywhere to protest the killing of their sons through war and June 2 was designated as the day to celebrate peace and motherhood.

She funded much of the protest gatherings with this intent and in 1873, the day was designated as Mother’s Peace Day in 18 north American states.

When Howe stopped funding the celebrated events, most of the peace and motherhood gatherings stopped except in Boston, Mass., where it was continued for some time. It was Anna Reeves Jarvis of West Virginia who picked up the thought with Mother’s Friendship Day so that families and neighbors would reunite after being divided by Union vs. Confederate sides of the war.

Then on May 10, 1908, after much lobbying to the churches, her daughter, Anna M. Jarvis, was successful in having the first Mother’s Day event at St. Andrews Methodist Church in Grafton, W. Va., and in a church in Philadelphia, Pa. Jarvis handed out white carnations to all of the mothers in attendance.

The National Restaurant Association says it is the most popular dine-out day, the flower industries, greeting cards, pampered treatments, such as spas and others and the jewelry businesses, have their own numbers to match the popularity of the day.