the case for boycotting mother's day

but not your mother's favourite china pattern, because some things are sacred

It’s Mother’s Day in North America, which means it’s Mother’s Day on social media, which means it’s Mother’s Day in the English-speaking world. Mass public displays of filial devotion are silly — sentimental pageants at best — but this one is hard to ignore. As a sole-care single mother with a distinctly ‘it’s complicated’ relationship with my own birth-giver, Mother’s Day for me is mainly an excellent excuse to stay off the internet. Not difficult these days, since most of my weekends are now given over to cooking and ferrying small boys to swimming and football.

The boys and I don’t celebrate Mother or Father’s Day in our house on principle anymore. Both ‘days’ remind us only of what we aren’t and what we lack, rather than who we are and what we have (which is each other, a.k.a. everything). Having said that I still get a bit nostalgic about the hallmark of Hallmark holidays from time to time.

As a little girl I loved Mother’s Day. I was a pleaser, you see, a consummate validation junkie, the sort of child who begged to pass the canapés around at the grown-ups’ party. I hero-worshipped my mother and craved her attention and Mother’s Day was a chance for me to ostentatiously perform my adoration in a socially sanctioned way she could not ignore. I adored every aspect of it. The ritual presentation of the badly-constructed hand-drawn card. The 7 am breakfast tray slopped with reheated coffee and orange juice. The preparation of burnt eggs and dry toast. The wildflower bouquet that made her sneeze. But I see now that I loved Mother’s Day for me — because it wasn’t for her at all.

I can’t remember precisely when it was that my mother told me she hated Mother’s Day and asked me to stop acknowledging it.