The question seems naive, since there is no need to question the central motivation of this special date, dedicated to thanking the love and dedication that our mothers offer us from birth, unconditionally. However, it is necessary to reflect a little about the origin of this celebration, in times like the current one, when two elements severely distort the meaning of both the date and its protagonist:since when is Mother's Day celebrated and why? What should transcend the commercial and advertising aspect that it has today, as happens with so many other special dates? What does it really mean to be a mother and to what extent can we say that all mothers deserve to be celebrated? The saturation of commercial offers and the increase in mothers by accident are signs of our times and it is necessary to reflect on them, based on this social convention created by civilizations in which the mother figure was revered, almost at religious and spiritual levels.
Rhea, the mother of the gods in Greek mythology, was the first protagonist of celebrations to honor the mother, in ancient Greece. The Romans also held festivities in honor of Cybele, goddess of the earth and fertility, and called them Hilaria. With the advent of Christianity, Mother's Day became a reason to highlight the figure of the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man for those who embrace the Catholic religion, to this day the one that most of followers it has in the world. In fact, in some countries the celebrations for Mother's Day They take place on December 8, the date on which the Immaculate Conception is also celebrated.
In all these auroral celebrations, the common idea is to offer, on that particular day, a recognition of the value of the mother, the unquestionable fact that without her, our life would not it would have been possible. In the modern era, it was in the second half of the 19th century that the first steps were taken to establish Mother's Day as we currently know it. In 1870, the American poet Julia Ward Howe published her Mother's Day Proclamation , which generated a whole movement to promote a day of homage to the woman who gives us life.
Although Howe's proclamation had some effect, it was not until 1914 that the second Sunday in May was officially established as the date to celebrate Mother's Day. The law, signed in the USA by its president Woodrow Wilson, materialized the fight that Ann Jarvis, a North American citizen, had begun in 1907, when she decided to organize a commemoration event two years after the death of her mother, an activist for the rights of women in the state of Virginia. Since then, this date has been extended in the calendar of several Western countries, including Peru.
Popular culture however has reduced this symbolic homage of love and self-sacrifice to a giving and receiving of things. Children do not conceive on Mother's Day without giving gifts and current mothers (at least a large percentage of them) associate this date with receiving a present, which will better represent the affection of their children in relation to its cost. But this Mother's Day mutation , of commemorative date in which nothing is expected in return to the current frenzy of offers and purchases, is not a matter of a short time ago, but rather it occurred just six years after its ratification in our modern era.
Paradoxically, it was Jarvis herself who, in 1920, began a fight, together with her sister Ellsinore, against this process of distorting the motivations of Day of the mother she, she even she was arrested for disturbing the peace with her noisy demonstrations. The Jarvis sisters used their inheritance to campaign against commercial Mother's Day celebrations . Anne complained bitterly about the negative symbolism of sending pre-printed cards to celebrate mothers on her day.
Mother's Day It should not only be a date of tribute to the author of our days, regardless of the gift-giving abilities that each one has. It is not bad to give gifts, the problem is when happiness depends on it or the perception of affection from the gift received, both issues encouraged by advertising campaigns that include messages such as "make mom happy", "show what you feel for her in her day” as if it depended on what we buy or don't buy.
It should also provoke reflection on what it means to be a mother and how many times, due to misinformation or carelessness, many women find themselves in that situation without having wanted or planned it and end up causing more harm than good to their children. Every mother should be protected and respected, out of common sense and consideration, but there are cases in which a mother, regardless of her cultural or socioeconomic level, gives clear signs of selfishness and little connection with her children, to the point of becoming their main enemies.
And many times, in an imperceptible way, advertising aimed at compulsive consumption and buying of things ends up displacing the notions of spirituality and respect that should be the main objectives of this celebration .