Ditch the flowers try some bondage this Mother's Day

NOT only did her eyes see the glory of the coming of the Lord but she also thought up an appalling idea that we have been suckered into accepting. She was Julia Ward Howe, who wrote the words for Battle Hymn Of The Republic to help facilitate slaughter, but later came up with a far worse atrocity - Mother's Day.

To be fair, Howe promulgated the idea of a Mother's Day in the aftermath of the American Civil War as, she intended, a contribution to peace. To be fair again, and it is beginning to hurt, her idea was about conciliation. Hence she gathered people together in groups to celebrate not a mother's day but a mothers' day. And that is my quarrel. The American concept was about national observance and group activity.

The British Mothering Sunday, an Anglican tradition, was a private activity, observed on the fourth Sunday in Lent, and associated with domestic servants and poor families gathering on a particular day. That sort of template seems fine to me but that is not what produced the Anglophone world's contemporary version of Mother's Day. As ever, those who like a fuss, a parade and a chance to inflict themselves on others won the day. In fact, Howe failed miserably with her attempts to launch Mother's Day but, alas, a stronger-minded woman called Anna Jarvis resurrected the notion in honour of her own mother's wish for reconciliation and commissioned a service with that theme at a church in West Virginia in May 1907. Within seven years, the idea had swept the States and, by 1914, President Wilson made it official and set Mother's Day on the second Sunday in May in deference to the date of Jarvis's original church service.

(Note that we British have stuck to the Lenten observance in late spring but otherwise we imported the whole hamper of pantomime effects from the Americans.) Each Mother's Day now honours the human ability to preserve and disseminate cliches, kitsch and gross sentimentality. This is how it works: the local post office, newsagent and chain store begins the alert some time in February with large cardboard cutouts of flowers. These warn us - especially the men - that Mother's Day is coming. Almost all of us then try to remember the date, fail dismally, feel inadequate and ashamed and resolve to be more attentive to our mothers. The cleverness of this is that the Christian calendar's diet of moveable feasts keeps us guessing each year but we can't remember why. How many guys down the boozer know that Mother's Day is the fourth Sunday in Lent and can then pull out the church calendar and work it out? None, but all can feel ashamed - and they do. Shame is the next step and to assuage it, the spending of money is required. Easy! The card manufacturers, florists, confectioners and Marks & Spencer are all waiting to help.

All of this is just tolerable, and might be forgiven as the way of the world, but it's the imagery that crushes, pounds and liquidises Mother's Day into sentimental schlock.

Remember the most honourable part of the US enterprise was the concept of post-war reconciliation through mothers of the soldiery. Now think of the twisted minds that have hijacked the idea and decide to define your mother in terms of flowers, butterflies and the awful verse you forgot to read before signing. Flowers? If my mother had a close association with vegetable matter it was Brussels sprouts, and I'll never eat those again.

Butterflies? What flew through the air in our house were boys undergarments together with the stirring chorus, "who left these here?" Of course, mothers are entitled to be idealised and fresh imagery from greetings cards helps. My own close association with pipes, fishing, Mallard class trains and vintage cars is accurately reflected on Father's Day cards.

A fortune will reward the entrepreneur who introduces the "get real" factor to images on Mother's Day cards. There are two possible lines of approach: the child's view of the mother or the mother's view of herself. The child's view is ideal for younger children. It is the mother as a source of labour and could be depicted in all sorts of ways. Cotton fields, Babylonian captivity and mines all spring to mind. The Serbs, as you would expect, have a unique approach. Their Mother's Day is in December and the tradition, one is led to believe, is for the younger children to bind and tie the mother while she is asleep and then, when she awakens, ransom her freedom in return for little gifts she has concealed under her pillow. That's the sort of imagery for our cards: the mother in bonds created by the family. Splendid.

The other category of "get real" images would be for adult children. In these cards, mothers' aspirations would be flattered. Teetering on the brink of titillation, these would permutate sleek, black cocktail dresses, sexual allure and lots of thin things.

The key to a successful Mother's Day ought to be personal and not institutional activity. In France, families tend to gather for a long lunch and conclude with a cake baked especially for mother. That seems to offer an appropriate degree of personal contact and attention while eliminating third parties with ideas about butterflies. The question of the washing up is best left for another occasion, as my brothers always said.

It is comforting to report that the person who most loathed Mother's Day was Anna Jarvis, the lady who persuaded President Wilson to make it a national holiday in America. She never married and had no children. What she witnessed in the years between 1907 and her death in 1948 was the gross commercialisation of an idea that began well, otherwise.

When she was dying in a nursing home, surrounded by cards with butterflies and flowers from all over the world, she confided to a journalist that she was sorry she ever started Mother's Day.Too late to apologise, I'm afraid.

lThis Life: Page 16

Copyright 2001
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.