The Self-Sinking Ship

Mother's Day has come and gone, and I did nothing more than leave a message on my mom's Facebook wall to commemorate it. I am, in general, uncomfortable with holidays; love, friendship, and kindness should never be compulsory, but trying to break from the tradition of celebrating holidays like Mother's Day is pretty difficult. Holidays are symbolic, and institutionalized symbolism soon strips the celebrated referent of any connection to its image, leaving future observers going through the mindless motions of ceremony ignorant of the ultimate reason for their actions. This kind of subservience to tradition has always left a bad taste in my mouth.

Mother's Day has its roots in feminism. Julia Ward Howe wrote "The Mother's Day Proclamation" in 1870 as a response to the Civil War. It called for women to take a more active role in directing society, which is noble and right. By 1920, the efforts of Mothers' Day Work Clubs had brought the holiday well into the public arena, and with that came commercialization which should have been inevitable. But maybe we were more innocent then. Maybe we trusted that integrity could endure even the mad scramble to convince fools with guilty consciences and issues with pathological mother-worship to part with their money. How long it took for Howe to be forgotten, I have no idea. Ann Jarvis is, perhaps, even less-remembered, but without her it is likely that Mother's Day would not have grown into the institution it is today.

And that is my point. Mother's Day is an institution. If I want to honor my mother, I can do it any day of the year. The responsibility of women to act to change society for the better is lost beneath empty tradition. Today, Mother's Day challenges no stereotypes. It does not challenge anyone or anything. It has become just another day on which we are expected to buy certain things. This is what I hate about holidays - they are meaningless, and they should have meaning. They are excessive and exploitative, and we should respond with a call to reject them but for one sad fact: that call for change would eventually become as pointless a symbol as Mother's Day is now.

Honor your mother as she deserves to be honored; and if she does not deserve it, then honor someone who is truly worthy. No one deserves love and respect simply because they fit into a certain marketing demographic. Tradition devalues itself over time. Take the initiative to make your world, if not the world at large, a place in which, even if our innocence is lost, we can still do what is best for ourselves.