Wanted: A Guaranteed Happy Mother’s Day.
Who Is It Really for?
The deluge of Mother’s Day e-mails, promotions, and commercials has begun. Again.
May started at midnight and already my Inbox is flooded with ways I can honor my mother by purchasing this, that, or the other thing.
Facebook and Instagram have wonderful gift ideas.
Turn-on the television and you’ll hear the same thing. You can’t get away from it.
Great! Maybe I can put a nice gift on my mother’s grave.
And suggestions that I make a donation in an honor of her is a thinly veiled attempt to extort money from the grieving.
That’s right. There are lots of us who don’t have mothers anymore. And there are lots more who have children who are ingrates.
The flip side of that is awful mothers. There are two sides to every story.
Do we really need to be reminded of how wonderful everyone else’s mother is?
Or that our mother is dead?
Our kids are ingrates and suck?
Or maybe even that your mother sucks?
Don’t get me wrong. Most mothers are dedicated and need to thanked, even praised. But one day doesn’t do it.
Florists, restaurants, and other merchants make a killing and children put that one day aside for just mom. And just that day.
If you mother is alive and you cherish her half as much as these sellers say you should or could prove you do with their gift, then chances are you spend more than one day a year with her. Or you pick-up the phone and talk to her.
She is a part of your life.
I applaud you. Moms can be tough and you’ve hung in there, a lot of you have. But you know what? You don’t need Mother’s Day either. Your mother is your mother every day and she knows it.
Who is it for then?
Is it for mothers or is it for merchants and the children who have only one day a year for them?
People have lives and kids and jobs and they put that one day aside. I get it. But do you need to be heckled by a barrage of advertisements into remembering your mother? Really?
It’s supposed to be a personal day, a mother and child reunion, not a day to smother your mother with cards, flowers, and other things she may or may not need or want.
What a mother wants and needs is not gifts, but you, your love and your time, given out of the joy of giving and being with her. The true gift is the gift of self. If you don’t have it to give, then that kind of defeats the purpose.
Mother’s Day is coming! For me it mine as well be Halloween.
In 1914, Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day at the behest of Anna Jarvis. She petitioned for this day to honor her mother and all mothers, though she herself was not one. By the time she died in 1948, she had completely renounced it due to the gross commercialization.
I agree with Anna Jarvis.
Spend time with the people you love. If your mother is still here, then hopefully she is one of them.
But think seriously.
Is it the only day you spend with her because you have to?
If so, you may be honoring yourself.
