While many decry Mother's Day as a 'creation of the greeting card companies,' the holiday actually has a much more colorful history. Championed as a simple day to honor one's own mother, the evolution of Mother's Day into a commercialized celebration resulted in the holiday's creator, Anna Jarvis, launching a massive campaign against what her creation had become. Calls for boycotts and vitriolic denouncements of candy and greeting card gifts were just some of the tactics used by Jarvis in her attempts to bring Mother's Day back to basics. More on the story at National Geographic.