Food Processing - Food Handling

Flowers, candy, greeting cards, restaurant meals, and lots of affection and appreciation will typify the day, which is good for business too.

Mother’s Day gives rise to the busiest day for restaurants and the exchange of about $100 million in gifts, and a vast number of greeting cards in the U.S. alone.

Andy Meehan, Executive Vice President Marketing at Paramount Cards, America’s oldest and third largest greeting card company, said, “Mother’s Day is the third most important card giving day after Christmas and Valentine’s. Half of all families exchange cards, including tens of millions by step-families. Card companies gear up for the day at least a year in advance. At Paramount our Mother’s Day cards run from handmade to value priced and are given by children both young and old.”

Meehan said Paramount Cards markets its full line of greeting cards through a wide array of companies, including supermarkets, drug stores, card stores and many others.

Hamilton Davison, President of Paramount Cards said, “Paramount knows what mothers think and how they appreciate loving sentiments from their children. Next year we’ll celebrate our Centennial Anniversary, which means we were well into the card business before 1914, when President Woodrow Wilson declared the day a national holiday, to be held on the second Sunday of May.”

The momentum for Mother’s Day began even earlier, as he noted that Ana Jarvis in 1907 established Mother's Day at her deceased mother’s church in West Virginia. The next year it spread to her hometown of Philadelphia and by 1911 was in most states. Three years later, President Wilson made it official.

There was earlier precedent for the holiday. In the U.S. in 1872, Julia Ward Howe, who wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic, began annual Mother's Day meetings in Boston. Before that, Mother's Day celebrations trace to the celebrations in ancient Greece to honor Rhea, the Mother of the Gods. Then, in the 1600s, England celebrated Mothering Sunday on the fourth Sunday of Lent and as Christianity spread in Europe, it changed to honor the Mother Church, with people honoring their mothers on that day.

Based in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, Paramount Cards features a full-line of more than 20,000 beautifully designed greeting cards, and is America’s oldest and third largest greeting card company. Paramount’s operating subsidiaries include Cardsmart Retail Corporation, a fast growing national chain of value priced card and gift stores; Image Craft, the second largest card publisher in Canada and supplier of over 90% of the dollar cards sold in Canada; Premier Greetings division, the USA leader in strategic value marketing; Lawson Falle, the second largest Christian card publisher, Images From The Heart, which markets products including handmade greeting cards sold through www.cardshopinabox.com; Paramount International is a leading supplier of private label and custom produced cards and related products.