Hatin' On Mother's Day

I don't like Mother's Day. 

I know..it sounds so mean to say it out loud! Or write it publicly, but really, I'm not a fan. 

At all.

That doesn't mean I don't like my mother, or being a mother, or seeing other mothers get flowers and attention. I'm not bitter or resentful, and I've got a husband who can pretty much rock any holiday - even the pathetic, Hallmarky ones - without trying. I'm also definitely not arguing, as so many Catholics do around St. Valentine's Day (though these same Catholics adore Mother's Day with a passion) that my motherhood should be celebrated everyday, shouldn't need a special day of overblown theatrics. I love that stuff, in general; setting aside special days to honor aspects of life: love, romance, motherhood..is an essential part of our humanity.

 I don't like Mother's Day because its fake.  It's a commercially created and socially enforced lie to women that her value comes primarily through her ability to birth; that her vocation as a mother is 'the hardest job in the world;' and that because of all this she is owed the veneration, affection, and affirmation of not only her family, but society at large. 

I hate feeling owed. I hate having my motherhood relegated to a "job" - it's banal, it's ugly, is de-relational. And above all that. I feel as though celebrating motherhood, in a society that celebrates no other aspect of womanhood and permits a mother to kill her children without a second thought, is sort of a joke. A sad, self-absorbed, depressing little joke. What aspect of motherhood does mother's day focus on anyway? Generally, it focuses on entitlement. "You deserve it..because your a mom." Lovely. And not at all the sort of attitude I want to indulge in, or pass down to my daughter.

Do I sound too harsh? I hope not..I want a celebration of motherhood, but one that celebrates motherhood in it's place among womanhood's other roles and blessings. I'd like to see Mother's Day drift and spread out into something almost pagan, something Marian, something holistic..we are not a Catholic culture, and I don't expect to change that, but within the Church, why can't we honor the many faces of the Theotokos: virgin, mother, consort/spouse, lamenting one, and wise old woman of Ephesus - Queen of Apostles..why can't we take on May Day again on the first, or the feast of her Queenship on the last of May..and use the day to honor the women in our lives who bear God to us - however they do so.

I'm not asking you to stop celebrating..really I'm not. But do try to celebrate well.

 Don't let your Mother's Day turn into a secular, self-congratulatory celebration of the world'sview of motherhood..instead celebrate the 'genius of women' - the little icon of the Mother of Christ we all have within ourselves. Celebrate the women who have mothered you as well as the women who have never borne children: the Paraskevas, the Theresas, the Magdelenes, and those still waiting to be born anew. The world tells us they have no value, that there is no point in honoring the woman-not-a-mother..she has no day, no cards, no flowers. But Christ tells us otherwise, and this Mother's Day, while I may go to brunch at the local cafe, and I'll definitely be calling my mother, I'll also be planning ways to honor the other women in my life, tucking their names up behind my Icons and honoring their lives as I'm able. Please join me?