We never celebrated Mother’s Day when I was growing up. Both my parents came from families that considered the holiday to be phony pageantry that was more about putting money in the pocket of Big Florist than it was about showing love and respect for our elders. I can’t remember ever really acknowledging the occasion as a child; it just wasn’t part of our family culture.
When I became a mother myself, it never occurred to me to honor the day. Fighting hoards of my fellow New Yorkers for an overpriced brunch reservation is my personal hell. Even the idea of being the center of my family’s special attention is somewhat mortifying to me; I’m not a big birthday person for this reason, either.
Of course, I love it when my daughters make me cards for any reason — I’m not that much of a jerk. While I acknowledge that the day is painful for many people who have lost or are estranged from their mothers, I don’t think we should get rid of the occasion; many find joy in it. It is just not for me.
The woman credited with creating our modern notion of Mother’s Day would likely agree with my family’s salty spirit. According to the Smithsonian’s blog, Anna Jarvis lobbied for a national Mother’s Day in the early 1900s to honor her mother, Ann Jarvis. Ann spent her entire life working to promote peace, unity and public health — most of Ann’s dozen children “died from diseases such as diphtheria or measles, which were common during her day in the Appalachian area of Virginia,” and so she devoted her life to the hygiene of her community. (Ann is probably rolling over in her grave right now as measles and whooping cough surge.)
A further irony: Anna was so appalled at the commercialization of the holiday she championed that she later tried to get Mother’s Day canceled. She ultimately “died penniless in a sanitarium where her bills were paid by the same greeting card companies and florists she despised,” according to the Smithsonian.
I shared the Jarvises’ story with my mother, who was not surprised. “Anything which can be commercialized will ultimately be corrupted,” she texted me. The only family holidays we really get into are Passover and Thanksgiving, because they are just about getting together over a big meal. I don’t know how you’d tart up Passover — plague-themed stemware? As for Thanksgiving, my mother put it well: “no one profits except the turkey farmers.”
As I was enjoying this conversation with my mom, it occurred to me that in a perverse way, our shared antipathy toward Mother’s Day is a way for us to bond. Until I had my own children and began to make decisions about what traditions and rituals to incorporate into our lives, I didn’t give all that much thought to different holidays. And when I was younger I didn’t fully appreciate my mom’s cranky, anti-consumerist bent. I was definitely mad about being the only child in my elementary school who did not get to go to Disney World because “it’s too clean” and “Walt Disney was a fascist.”
Now, with age and experience, I am glad that my parents never put pressure on any occasion to live up to vaunted expectations of “holiday magic.” Unlike many, I am not stressed out thinking about Mother’s Day. I’ll see my mom tomorrow, but only because my parents come over most Sunday afternoons to spend time with my family.
It’s been 12 years of my parents taking my girls to the park, reading them books, destroying the kitchen with art projects and sharing meals with us. An annual bouquet or a brunch can’t adequately express the gratitude that I have for my mother’s regular, loving presence in my life and in the lives of my children. It is a blessing that goes far beyond the second Sunday in May.
End Notes
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Is my personality squats? I watched all eight episodes of the Netflix series “The Four Seasons” in less than 12 hours — it goes down so easy, and anything by Tina Fey is a must for me. The show is about three marriages at midlife, and it has an incredible cast, including Steve Carell, Colman Domingo and Kerri Kenney-Silver (who I have loved since she was part of the sketch comedy show “The State” in the ’90s). It has more dramatic elements than Fey’s shows tend to, but I’m still laughing at the mediocre play that Carell’s character’s daughter writes and performs about her parents’ divorce. “My personality is squats,” says the blowup doll representing Carell’s much younger girlfriend.
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Deep sigh: One of my favorite follows on Instagram lately has been @derekberes. Derek is a co-host of the podcast “Conspirituality,” which pushes back against bad information and cultlike thinking in the wellness world. Derek’s posts keep me updated on the health claims coming out of members of the Trump administration and their associates. For example, without Derek, I wouldn’t know that the new nominee for surgeon general, Casey Means, posted this in 2024: “Our ‘free will’ allows us to determine which environmental reality our cells experience. The result is whether we experience a state of health or not.” Um, OK?
Feel free to drop me a line about anything here.
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Jessica Grose is an Opinion writer for The Times, covering family, religion, education, culture and the way we live now.
The post My Mother and I Bond Over Ignoring Mother’s Day appeared first on New York Times.
