"A day of sentiment, not profit"

May 11, 2019 11:06 PM

Years after she founded Mother’s Day, Anna Jarvis was dining at the Tea Room at Wanamaker’s department store in Philadelphia. She saw they were offering a "Mother’s Day Salad." She ordered the salad and when it was served, she stood up, dumped it on the floor, left the money to pay for it, and walked out in a huff. Jarvis had lost control of the holiday she helped create, and she was crushed by her belief that commercialism was destroying Mother’s Day.

Wikipedia:

Although the national proclamation represented a public validation of her efforts, Jarvis always believed herself to be the leader of the commemorative day and therefore maintained her established belief in the sentimental significance of the day to honor all mothers and motherhood. Jarvis valued the symbolism of such tangible items as the white carnation emblem, which she described as:

Its whiteness is to symbolize the truth, purity and broad-charity of mother love; its fragrance, her memory, and her prayers. The carnation does not drop its petals, but hugs them to its heart as it dies, and so, too, mothers hug their children to their hearts, their mother love never dying. When I selected this flower, I was remembering my mother’s bed of white pinks.

(Mother's Day previously)

posted by Johnny Wallflower (27 comments total)

Hmm, compare and contrast:
Wikipedia:
While others profited from the day, Jarvis did not, and she spent the later years of her life with her sister Lillie. In 1943, she began organizing a petition to rescind Mother's Day.[23] However, these efforts were halted when she was placed in the Marshall Square Sanitarium in West Chester, Pennsylvania.[24] People connected with the floral and greeting card industries paid the bills to keep her in the sanitarium.

Clickbait article:
Jarvis was never told that her bill for her time at the asylum was partly paid for by a group of grateful florists.
posted by bleep at 11:16 PM on May 11, 2019 [10 favorites]

I'm saying that it seems like they had her put away.
posted by bleep at 11:19 PM on May 11, 2019 [26 favorites]

Can't help but note that the following article on Mental Floss is about seven pre-Mother's Day shopping deals to take advantage of.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:49 PM on May 11, 2019 [3 favorites]

Mother's Day was meant to be a day to imagine world peace not buy pink and purple frosted cakes.
posted by The Whelk at 12:42 AM on May 12, 2019 [4 favorites]

The whole article seems like it's intentionally ignoring any politics.

It almost implies she was a grumpy and/or crazy old woman raging against a loss of personal control, and doesn't question whether her issues were real or have maybe only become more prevalent with time.

Then the bit about the charities. I don't know much about American War Mothers or their history, but I'd be shocked if they mightn't have been a little controversial to some, and honestly maybe an organisation it's appropriate to disrupt with protest. Some context might have made things a lot clearer.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 1:54 AM on May 12, 2019 [1 favorite]

Jarvis soon soured on the commercial interests associated with the day. She wanted Mother’s Day “to be a day of sentiment, not profit.”

It’s like she didn’t realize she was living in a capitalist society!

I did like that the opposition in Congress was bipartisan, though. I guess all parties can unite in the important things, like dumping on women.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:20 AM on May 12, 2019 [3 favorites]

I wonder how many people will be more concerned with the value of the gift they get their mom than the quality of the time they spend with her today...or any day?

Commercialism. Beh.
posted by ascrabblecat at 4:11 AM on May 12, 2019 [1 favorite]

It is actually kind of shocking what a big deal Mother's Day is in the US. We celebrated Mother's Day in India too, but more in a make your mother breakfast in bed plus make/get her a card kind of way. The local mothers' FB group I'm on is full of people upset that their partners did not make an effort for Mother's Day / angst over their mothers and MILs getting upset over not being celebrated sufficiently. At some point one just wants to burn it all with fire. It is kind of tiring how almost every holiday in the US turns into an excuse to buy stuff / feel bad that you didn't buy enough / compare how much you go vs other people etc. etc.
posted by peacheater at 4:38 AM on May 12, 2019 [11 favorites]

I'm gathering that Mother's Day is now hypercommercial in the U.S.? (Yes, yes, cynical MeFites, I know that everything is hypercommercial in the U.S.)

When did that happen? When I was growing up (1980s), it was exactly as peacheater described in India: breakfast in bed, card, maybe flowers. That's it. Instead of breakfast in bed, dinner in a restaurant in some cases. It was a bit capitalistic (most people didn't make their own cards, cut their own flowers, or grow their own wheat/raise chickens for eggs/raise cows for milk to make pancakes), but certainly not the kind of thing that I'm gathering is currently en vogue.
posted by Bugbread at 5:08 AM on May 12, 2019 [1 favorite]

Bugbread and peacheater, that's exactly how it was in the US when I was growing up: breakfast in bed and probably a card. Much in the same way that the wedding industry has exploded in the last twenty years with even those fairly low on the socioeconomic ladder feeling pressure to replicate the Charles-and-Diana wedding, so have things like Mothers' Day and Fathers' Day radically expanded in scale. This is mainly due to successful marketing IMO. These days as we know them have effectively been created by the companies that want to sell you things with which to observe them. If advertising and entertainment and your neighbors are all suggesting that it's the done thing to make a huge production out of Mothers' Day, are you going to be the heel who doesn't do it? I mean, you love your mother, right?
posted by slkinsey at 5:32 AM on May 12, 2019 [6 favorites]

In ancient times every day was mother's day.
posted by DJZouke at 6:04 AM on May 12, 2019 [2 favorites]

I really don't think the commercialization is much greater today than what Jarvis railed against. I mean, now it's maybe brunch or dinner plus flowers, but that's about it. Certainly not comparable to, say, Halloween, where massive displays of lights and decorations have become nearly de rigeur. OTOH, I don't belong to any neighborhood Facebook groups so I'm not seeing angst, but my take on those groups is they basically exist to perform angst.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:24 AM on May 12, 2019

I think what's gotten worse is the performative aspect of [Mother's Day, Father's Day, Valentine's Day, Siblings' Day], fueled by social media and related to but different from the commercialization. My facebook and instagram feeds are filled with breathless declarations of love, which I'm sure are quite sincere, but strike me as even tackier than a "Best Mommy Ever" in multicolored Comic Sans with some of the letters written backwards.
posted by basalganglia at 8:10 AM on May 12, 2019 [8 favorites]

My daughter makes everything she gives me for mother's day. So it still doesn't have to be commercial. Just depends on how you want to do it. (I usually just call my moms and try to have time for a good conversation, if they want one.)
posted by Margalo Epps at 8:26 AM on May 12, 2019

"I didn't ask to be made into a day!"
--Mother's Day's daughter
posted by pracowity at 8:29 AM on May 12, 2019 [1 favorite]

In short, “Have things become more commercial? When I was young, we just celebrated by buying at least two nigh-mandatory disposable products from big industries!”

People get so mad that we like to celebrate things with stuff.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:50 AM on May 12, 2019 [9 favorites]

Anna Jarvis was pretty clear on what she thought of printed cards etc:

A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world. And candy! You take a box to Mother—and then eat most of it yourself. A pretty sentiment.
posted by splitpeasoup at 9:21 AM on May 12, 2019

Its whiteness is to symbolize the truth, purity and broad-charity of mother love; its fragrance, her memory, and her prayers. The carnation does not drop its petals, but hugs them to its heart as it dies, and so, too, mothers hug their children to their hearts, their mother love never dying.

This is where I get to be like: I'm certainly not pro-commercialism. But I'm really, really not sure that this sort of sentiment is any healthier. This isn't just some kind of automatic default set of things that happens to you when you have children. Even setting aside that some mothers are abusive or neglectful or just not good at being moms, there's a much larger subset who, like, work at being good moms, constantly, despite having a lot of their own shit going on. And a lot of the ones who aren't good moms, it's because they assume that the mere fact of being The Mother is the thing that has meaning and makes their decisions right and their emotional responses appropriate. Can we celebrate something without having to put it on this kind of pedestal of unrealistic expectations? The "sentimental" version of this doesn't seem any healthier than the greeting card and premade flower arrangement version.
posted by Sequence at 9:31 AM on May 12, 2019 [19 favorites]

Okay, this is the kind of commercialism I can get behind.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:48 AM on May 12, 2019 [1 favorite]

Where is the upside of celebrating these holidays? Does anyone feel actual joy from them without countervailing guilt/grief/remorse?

Honestly, yes. And while guilt/grief/remorse are present for many of us (last year's mother's day came right after I had yet another miscarriage, which was... let's just go with 'bittersweet'), those don't in themselves universally cancel out that joy for those who feel it to a point where it's worth just scrapping the whole thing.

I get that days celebrating particular relationships are fraught and awful for many people whose experience of those relationships is not great. I get that it is important to remember the experience of those who don't have mothers, have bad experiences with their own mothers, can't be mothers and want to, and all the other people who do not enjoy this kind of day. But. Motherhood as a vague concept might get celebrated, in a waffly sentimentalised way, but the actual work of it on the ground already involves so much societally mandated subsuming of your own self to the needs and wants of those around you. And after a while, "you don't get to enjoy this one day that celebrates this role you're doing unless you first prioritise the emotional needs of everyone who's not you" sounds like yet more exhortation to put yourself sweetly and politely behind everybody else.
posted by Catseye at 10:56 AM on May 12, 2019 [10 favorites]

I don’t mind that mothers (and fathers) have a formalized holiday in which people are expected to appreciate them. I’m not a mother, but I think it’s easy to let people in a caregiving role go unacknowledged and taken for granted. (I’m not suggesting having a holiday makes up for the other 364 days.)

I think that in the US, the whole mother/child dynamic has become hyper-commodified to the point where, if you have children, you are now expected to devote every waking minute to paying active attention to your kids, which is incredibly unhealthy. And these days, if you have a mother, you’re likewise expected to go to outrageous lengths to pay homage to the saint who bore you, which is especially fucked up when the saint who bore you is actually a terrible person. Or if you recently lost a child, or if you’re unwillingly infertile, or if your mother is dead. Apparently you’re supposed to get over all that for the day and be like MOMS ARE THE GREATEST. You’re supposed to celebrate mothers and motherhood as though it is the most amazing thing anyone could possibly do with their life. Um, why?

It definitely occurs to me, as an unmarried woman with no kids and a shitty mother, how increasingly noticeable it is to others that I don’t participate in these things. And that’s just...uncomfortable. It’s like there’s one side who wants to convince me that women aren’t good for anything besides reproducing and keeping house, and the flip side who wants to convince me that anything I accomplish is meaningless unless it was done in the service of motherhood. I can’t possibly be as busy, tired, fulfilled, capable of love, altruistic, or a mature human being unless I’ve had kids. It’s bizarre.
posted by Autumnheart at 2:22 PM on May 12, 2019 [6 favorites]

In short, I feel that women are becoming more pressured to fit a very limited, restrictive, and self-effacing idea of womanhood, not less pressured.
posted by Autumnheart at 2:24 PM on May 12, 2019 [2 favorites]

thoroughburro: "In short, “Have things become more commercial? When I was young, we just celebrated by buying at least two nigh-mandatory disposable products from big industries!”"

Yeah, that's the whole point of me saying hypercommercial. Unlike a lot of fancy commercial holidays, cards are easy to make. You can create a sweet Mother's Day card in 30 minutes or so.

So in the 1980s, we celebrated by buying at most two disposable products (non-mandatory) (flowers and card), more likely one disposable product (non-mandatory) (card), and often zero disposable products, instead taking thirty minutes to make a card (which, while technically "disposable," probably wouldn't be disposed of). Plus making breakfast.

So if modern Mother's Day still consists of spending between $2 to $30 dollars, or taking 30 minutes of time to bring the amount down to $0, and then making breakfast, I don't see what the big deal is. If, on the other hand, it has turned into a bigger and more commercial affair, then, yes, things have become more commercial.
posted by Bugbread at 4:44 PM on May 12, 2019

To be honest, I think every holiday has become insanely commercial, or at least insanely focused on what the gifts associated with it are. Mother's Day, Father's Day, Easter, Valentine's Day, and all the life events (prom-posals? push gifts?) now require some sort of purchased or very well-put-together item that you can show to your loved one to commemorate...whatever.

I love giving gifts (and getting them, too!) but the fact that there are SO MANY days designated in one way or another for gift-giving makes the whole idea of gifts a little less special and a lot more obligatory, which I guess helps those people selling gifts, but makes things tough if you don't want to feel stingy and rude.
posted by xingcat at 6:53 AM on May 13, 2019

As a daughter, and one who just generally doesn't Do cards, I suck at Mother's Day (and Father's Day). This drives my parents, who are very much greeting card people, absolutely nuts, though they understand to an extent that this is just how I am. My mom is also a military vet and it is a BFD to her that she gets thanked for her service on Veteran's Day. (I am distinctly uncomfortable with this, first because I find it weird nationalistic patriotism on a day that was conceived of to contemplate the end of war, not celebrate our military like our favorite football team, secondly because that my spouse is a vet of a foreign military who thinks being thanked for his service is fucking weird, but I do it because it matters to my mom) It feels weird. I guess I reserve my feelings of entitlement on certain holidays for Thanksgiving and Christmas just because they are imbued with so much particular family tradition for me, and other holidays - my birthday included! - I've never always done anything in particular so I don't have especially high expectations about them, and I don't always do very well remembering that others really do care.

As a mother, I honestly could not care less about Mother's Day, and while I know it means a lot to other people I find myself bewildered by all the moms upset that they didn't get what they wanted from their spouses or kids. And I get that a lot of that reaction is fueled by the emotional labor imbalance where so many women put a lot of thought and effort into obligatory holidays while so many men can just afford to do the bare minimum (or less) and expect accolades, I do get it, but the increasing expectations of what Mother's Day ought to be/mean doesn't solve that problem - it just exacerbates it, and it's a problem the other 364 days of the year, too.

Also a little weirded out by all the social media posts about peoples' wives, mothers, themselves, etc. I don't know. It's just gotten so performative. I did mention my mother on my Twitter but I did so in the context of my usual SJW content around women in male-dominated fields so ... I guess I'm part of the problem, but man, it's just such an onslaught.

I dunno, I really felt weird about it this year in a way I haven't in past years. I'd be okay with it going away. But in the meantime I'll continue to feel guilty for never sending cards to my parents.
posted by olinerd at 7:13 AM on May 13, 2019 [3 favorites]

Using buttons to compete with flowers? Interesting tactic.
posted by doctornemo at 1:43 PM on May 13, 2019

olinerd, I hear you. One thing I felt from all the posts on social media and on mom's groups about Mother's Day was how much pressure this ironically put on mothers! It's like this pressure to have had the perfect day - when honestly, no day can really be perfect - your kid can still wake up super early and barf on the couch cushions. I felt it a bit too - I wanted to go to Lilac Sunday at the Arnold Arboretum and then was bummed when it was cold and rainy all day. I almost dragged everyone out anyway - and then I thought about it some more and decided that I was just being ridiculous - if I wouldn't go to the Arnold Arboretum when it was cold and rainy any other day, why should I go just because it's Mother's Day - when I know it's probably not going to increase our happiness level?
posted by peacheater at 6:16 AM on May 15, 2019