As I’m sure you’re aware, this coming Sunday is Mother’s Day (it falls on a Sunday this year)—a day that people all over the country celebrate by giving mothers time off from cooking and cleaning and so on.

“Don’t worry about it,” is the sentiment. “You’ll just do double tomorrow.”

It’s clearly a commercial holiday. Basically, Mother’s Day was invented when someone decided that if they just made up a random holiday to sell flowers and cards, people would say, “Nope! We don’t celebrate that. We just had a holiday.” But if the holiday was about buying these things for your mother, everyone would be afraid to say, “Nope.” At worst, they’d say, “We don’t hold of Mother’s Day, but we’re getting mommy something anyway, in case she does.” In order for a family to not hold of Mother’s Day, the mother herself has to say that she doesn’t hold it. The minhag for this Yom Tov goes by the mother.

And even if she says that, since when has your mother or wife saying, “It’s OK, you don’t have to get me anything,” actually meant that it’s OK, you don’t have to get her anything?

Whoever created Mother’s Day is a genius.

Not only that, but it’s even better than, say, Veterans Day, because everyone either is a mother or knows someone who’s a mother. Most people are even related to a mother. Some mothers even have their own mothers. This is a gold mine!

And the day is not a huge deal. There isn’t any major cleaning or kashering to be done, except maybe after the kids make breakfast. There are just a few simple, basic Mother’s Day minhagim that everyone goes by.

“But how did this get started?” you ask.

Ever since mothers were invented, the secular world has been wondering, “What is the best way to recognize them?” And then someone said, “How about once a year?” And everyone thought it was a good idea.

That was what I thought. So I looked it up. And I now present to you some facts about the invention of Mother’s Day, depending on how loosely you define the word “fact”:

FACT: The person who officially proclaimed Mother’s Day was President Woodrow Wilson, also known as the father of Mother’s Day.

FACT: The mother of Mother’s Day was a woman named Anna Jarvis, who, in 1908, threw two celebrations to honor her mother, Ann Jarvis.

FACT: Ann Jarvis died in 1905.

FACT: Anna didn’t let that stop her. Guests were very confused.

FACT: To be honest, it sounds like it was more of a yahrzeit seuda.

FACT: Anna had a great time at this yahrzeit seuda, or as great a time as could be expected, and called it “Mother’s Day,” singular, because she only had one mother. So she decided, why not do it every year? Why not push to have the whole country do it every year? Around the anniversary of her mother’s death, specifically.

FACT: Ann had been a teacher, and when Anna was 12, she heard her mother tell her students, “I hope and pray that someone, sometime, will found a memorial Mother’s Day commemorating her for the matchless service she renders to humanity in every field of life. Hint, hint.”

FACT: Anna quit her job in advertising and started writing to politicians, urging them to declare a national holiday. At first, Congress rejected her proposal, joking that the next thing they knew, they would also have to proclaim a Mother-in-Law’s Day.

FACT: Mother-in-Law’s Day was established in 1934, and it’s the fourth Sunday in October. Most people get away without doing anything, because it’s just a matter of avoiding the “What are you two doing for Mother-in-Law’s Day?” conversation.

FACT: Ann’s original idea had been for mothers to get together and celebrate with each other. This was also the original idea for Groundhog Day. And Presidents’ Day.

FACT: After spending six years trying to establish Mother’s Day, Anna spent the rest of her life urging people to stop celebrating it. At least the way people do now.

FACT: She was very against how commercial it had become almost immediately—especially when she walked into a restaurant and saw, on the menu, something called “Mother’s Day salad.”

FACT: That sounds like mulched flowers.

FACT: She didn’t even like how the flower companies were making money off the holiday. When she’d originally gotten them involved, her intention was that you write your mother a personal note and give her one flower. And now it’s turned into buying a card, and then buying a whole bunch of flowers to make up for not having written the card yourself.

FACT: She spent the rest of her life suing anything and everything Mother’s-Day-related, even attacking Eleanor Roosevelt for using the day to collect charity for needy mothers. She never got married or had children, as she was too busy raising a stink about Mother’s Day.

FACT: Or did she? She was the mother of Mother’s Day. Apparently, Mother’s Day is about having a kid that you envision turning out one way, and you name it after your mother, but then after a while, you realize that it’s gotten too big to be contained, it doesn’t do anything itself, and it’s way too obsessed with money and candy. Though I suppose any mother of an actual human child could have told her that part of being a mother is realizing which things are important and letting things go.

FACT: Nachas helps a lot.

FACT: In short, this is a holiday tinged with guilt if we celebrate it and guilt if we don’t. That’s what makes it Mother’s Day.

Mordechai Schmutter is a freelance writer and a humor columnist for Hamodia and other magazines. He has also published seven books and does stand-up comedy. You can contact him at [email protected].