At the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon, I grow less and less enamored of Mother's Day as the years pass.
A day devoted to honoring mothers is a grand idea yet the day simply doesn't possess the gleeful feel of a birthday. There is neither poultry nor cake associated with it so it's rather grey from a purely culinary perspective.
And what of the ubiquitous and always packed beyond leisure and comfort Mother's Day Brunch you ask? It only adds to my curmudgeon-ness.
And what of the ubiquitous and always packed beyond leisure and comfort Mother's Day Brunch you ask? It only adds to my curmudgeon-ness.
While I appreciate President Woodrow Wilson's signing the joint resolution (May 8, 1914) that made Mother's Day possible, its endless commercialization now makes it all terribly contrived. There's a degree of pressure and stress associated with it whether you're the mother, the child - young or old - or the father of the child.
Mothers, alone or collectively, are a force to be reckoned with. Rather than Mother's Day being a day mothers take off in anticipation of flowers and gifts, perhaps it should be a day when we work harder...collectively.
While Julia Ward Howe's 1870 Mother's Day Proclamation may be naive given the current state of our world, it's message is one all mothers relate to:
Arise, then, women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or tears!
Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have taught them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the bosom of the devastated earth, a voice goes up with our own. It says, "Disarm, Disarm!"
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail & commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar but of God...
What might happen if we mothers, even on this one day, took Julia Ward Howe's words to heart? What might happen if we took the fierce passion and determination we possess for our children and consciously threw that energy into the ether - knowing mothers everywhere were doing the same thing? How would it change our world?
I think we should try it.
I confess to still wanting a card though. Homemade. With my children's own words written on it.
I still have all the others.
Mothers, alone or collectively, are a force to be reckoned with. Rather than Mother's Day being a day mothers take off in anticipation of flowers and gifts, perhaps it should be a day when we work harder...collectively.
While Julia Ward Howe's 1870 Mother's Day Proclamation may be naive given the current state of our world, it's message is one all mothers relate to:
Arise, then, women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or tears!
Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have taught them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the bosom of the devastated earth, a voice goes up with our own. It says, "Disarm, Disarm!"
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail & commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar but of God...
What might happen if we mothers, even on this one day, took Julia Ward Howe's words to heart? What might happen if we took the fierce passion and determination we possess for our children and consciously threw that energy into the ether - knowing mothers everywhere were doing the same thing? How would it change our world?
I think we should try it.
I confess to still wanting a card though. Homemade. With my children's own words written on it.
I still have all the others.
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