Happy Hallmark Day

It's Mother's Day this Sunday apparently.  I don't know this because of heavy handed hint dropping from my maternal progenitor and I'm not even going to pretend that I might have remembered it myself.  Fortunately I was rescued from the swamp of ignorance by the tireless efforts of pretty much every single commercial enterprise on the planet all of them attempting to persuade me to purchase their products as a gift for my mother.  So far I've got her a close in weapons system and a do it yourself trepanning kit.  I'm sure she'll be pleased.

Mother's Day is quite a recent tradition as traditions go.  Normally something has to hang around for several centuries before we dignify it with the title "tradition" thus giving us an excuse to keep doing it.  At this point we pretty much have to continue with it because the only other alternative is to publicly admit that our ancestors were gopher brained halfwits.  But Mother's Day is modern, barely a century old.  It started, of course, in America which can be forgiven for having new traditions as it hasn't been around long enough to get any old ones.  President Woodrow Wilson officially inaugurated it in 1914.  Considering the decisions being made by the leaders of the rest of the world in 1914 Mother's Day seems thoroughly sensible, or at least harmless, by comparison.

President Wilson may have signed the paper but the driving force for Mother's Day was one Anna Jarvis from West Virginia who wanted to honour her own mother and by extension all others.  She lobbied, advocated and just plain pestered until first her own state and then the rest of the country took it on board.

Others who took it on board were greetings card companies, chocolate manufacturers and sellers of flowers everywhere much to the horror of its creator as she saw her simple expression of love and gratitude transformed into the most crassly commercialised celebration of the year after Christmas.  Poor Anna Jarvis spent the rest of her life campaigning against the commercialisation and exploitation of Mother's Day.  A measure of her success can be found in the fact that Hallmark makes about a gajillion dollars a year out of Mother's Day and Anna Jarvis died childless and alone in a sanatorium.  Its never pretty watching idealism collide with reality.

Back to the present day and my mother has found the ideal way to celebrate Mother's Day by contriving to put several thousand miles between her and her offspring.  She will be enroute to a cruise on the Danube River at around about the time I would normally be making a guilt laden phonecall to explain why I had forgotten it was Mother's Day again.  I wish her loads of riverine fun and heartfelt thanks for letting me off the hook.  Just one of the countless things I have to be grateful to my Mother for.  Her presents can be opened when she gets back.  Although I have to admit I'm getting a little uncertain about my purchases.  The weapons system will no doubt come in handy the next time I drop by unannounced but let's face it, she needs a trepanning kit like she needs a hole in the head.

And surely you must have seen that joke coming from the first paragraph.