It's another May, another Mother's Day. The 2026 edition.

For about two months, right after the Valentine's Day campaigns come to an end, a new set of advertising and campaigning starts for the next important retail day of the year.

And we have been doing this for over a century now regardless of critics who have argued it is about honoring rather than gift-giving

Anna Jarvis , the woman who founded Mother's Day in the early twentieth century as a day of personal sentiment and to honor her mother, was already calling it out as a too commercialized event by the 1920s.

What people in the US have been giving as gifts for more than a century also tells an interesting story about gender and gift-giving traditions.

1910s Gift Giving: Carnation and a Cup of Tea

The earliest Mother’s Days were genuinely simple. Newspaper columns and ads recommended a handwritten message, or arranging a time to share a pot of tea. Advertisements in this decade were more likely to promote Mother's Day sermons than products.

Around this time as well is when the white carnation was established as the official emblem of the day. Still just symbols of a quiet, personal gesture, but not yet a retail event.

The Commerce Craze For Mother’s Day Began In The 1920s

This is the decade Jarvis started sounding the alarm about the holiday becoming too much focused around gift giving.

And sure enough, gift-giving was expanding rapidly, with full ad pages offering candy boxes wrapped with white ribbons, telegrams, flowers, framed mottos, stationery, even “Mother Records,” the early music albums selected for the occasion.

The 1930s Was For Perfume, Chocolates, And Household Goods

Even in the middle of the Great Depression, advertisers saw opportunity.

This is when the commercial pages started featuring distinctly feminine products. Yardley and Coty perfumes, Whitman’s Samplers, alongside the new category of household “gadgets”: electric toasters, waffle irons, curling irons.

Like ads proposed throughout the year, the pitch was the same: the promise that technology would “lighten her work.” Which mostly meant giving her better tools to keep doing the same work.

The 1940s Turned Practical and Sentimental

Personal care items and household goods remained the standard during global war.

Keeping sentiment central marketers continued advertising personal through announcing personal care items such as cleansing creams, manicure sets, make up ensembles, and toilet waters as gifting recommendations.

And although nobody was getting extravagant, chocolate started making it big into the advertising spreads with Myra Monet Chocolates, Gold Craft Chocolates, and Hershey’s Kisses.

After the 1950s, Fashion Took Over

The postwar boom brought new fabrics like nylon and a new consumer identity for women. Mother’s Day lists were filled with nylon tricot lingerie, frilly slips, petticoats, and what catalogues called “fashionable spring costumes.”

The gift shifted from the kitchen to the closet, and publications began circulating lists of the best gifts for her.

More Experiences And Organization For The 1970s and 1980s

Two new things started appearing more prominently in magazines and newspapers.

First, the experience: dining out became a major Mother’s Day tradition, with suggestions for bus tokens and airplanes tickets making it to the list, alongside jewelry and sophisticated accessories to wear for the occasion.

Second, the format changed: “last-minute gift checklists” with bulleted gifts including “houseplants, or new pots or hangers for plants that look pretty in windows,” or perhaps a “charm bracelet.” The fixation on filling the cabinets with household appliances turned domestic work into a kind of game, with advertisements suggesting that “appliances are good mommy games: a yogurt maker for a health nut, an ice cream maker for a sweet tooth, a timer for a clock watcher.”

Flowers Had Long Been The Perfect Gifts. The 1990s Brought the High-End Bouquet

Florists adapted to changing tastes and were a big driver to the industry’s growth by making days like Mother’s Day one of the biggest sales days of the year.

More and more the era of “garden-variety” arrangements gave way to high-end business blooms with curated, expensive, designed to signal something more than a grocery-store afterthought.

Books and a Shift in Tone Towards Culture and Social Responsibility With The New Millennium

The New York Times dining guides for Mother’s Day published editions year after year, and after the 2000s curated "best of" book lists became a popular gift format.

More intellectual, and still deeply personal.

Another emergence in this period more prominently (because Mother’s Day protests were not new to the new century) is the use of Mother's Day not just as a commercial occasion but as a policy occasion . Advocacy organizations and editorial pages began framing the holiday as an opportunity to ask what mothers actually need in terms of structural change.

Last-Minute Gift May Not Come in a Box

The “best gifts for mother” lists , the dining guides for the day, and last-minute gift guides are still with us, and florists around the country likely mark Mother’s Day as the end of the busiest part of their season.

The founder was right in her prediction that Mother’s Day would become bigger and bigger commercially.

But one interesting question is whether business has helped make the day more important and mothers’ work more visible, or whether it has mainly turned that recognition into another opportunity for sales.

Quotes are from Adams, Nancy, Checklist for Mother’s Day, Chicago Tribune, May 12, 1974.