Mother's day madness or the brave new world

I saw the headline flash across my newsfeed, Mother's Day cards will no longer use the word mum. So the headline took my interest and despite I clicked onto the article and found there was no official push to remove Mother's Day from our calendar. This is just a UK supermarket selling gender neutral cards titled Happy You Day where the word mother doesn't appear on the card - ironic.

Scrolling through the comments section, I saw the usual faux outrage, the personal attacks and taunts of snowflake and other barbs plus the usual trolls baiting the susceptible. I read the comments to attempt to gauge the public opinion but I find they are dominated by the same old hacks personally attacking any views different to their own. I  don't care if they are left wing, progressive, right wing or conservative - you can state your opinion without attacking others.

I had always thought Mother's Day, and Father's Day for that matter was some slick marketing campaign designed to get us to part with out cash. To be honest, I never held much credence in Mother's Day - why be nice to your mother just one day a year? So when I started searching and found that Mother's Day actually has origins in ancient Greece and Rome - I was surprised.

Whilst Anna Jarvis is credited with founding the modern Mother's Day in the United States in 1908, this was also an anti-war movement sediment that was promoted by her own mother who had died three years earlier. There were some great ideas with fundraising for charitable purposes such as mothers of poor families and mothers of World War I veterans.

Ironically, Jarvis then fought against the commercialisation of Mother's Day actually going broke in the process, even the charitable objectives. She dubbed the promoters Christian pirates and was against the notion of the poor mother as she believed charity made them the object of pity. I can't say I now have a new found respect for Mother's Day because the crass commercialisation has overtaken the day but at least I know it didn't start out that way.