“Progressives have always loved holidays, which may be why we’ve created so many of them. There are … May Day. And Labor Day. And Mother’s Day, which started out as the first and perhaps greatest progressive holiday of all. … Conservatives don’t like holidays unless they can use them to sell stuff. They have special reason to really not like this one. Mother’s Day got its start as the fusion of two holidays created by two women, both activists protesting the carnage of the Civil War: … Ann Jarvis, whose established the first Mother’s Work Day in 1858 to improve sanitation among her Appalachian neighbors … [and] was Boston socialite, suffragette, and poet Julia Ward Howe … still best remembered as the author of The Battle Hymn of the Republic — the abolitionist anthem that captures much of the righteous fury of the Union cause.” (05/10/08)