yo MOM!

People who know me very well know that I am not really a big fan of holidays: mothers day, fathers day, womans day, mens day, valentines day, independence day, christmas, easter, new years...

[btw I know I probably sound like a massive cynic]

I find these days so materialistic and the main emphasis of each one is so fabricated and made up into some glamour-puss that it has nothing to do with what it was originally intended. Don't get me wrong, I know we all love an exchuse to not work or to have a really long lunch. I personally love the fact that it is a great reason to meet up with the family and have ridiculous large lunches that go on till the night. But the massive materialism really puts me off. Christmas and Valentines day being the worst, the forced happiness and ridiculous expenses spent on fine dining, flowers, chocolates just for that one night (in the hopes of getting laid) and then it vanishing for the rest of the year till some anniversary or birthday reminder on your blackberry reminds you that you should buy flowers. Valentines day was an old Roman tradition for coupling up strangers, basically a lotto for marriage. It also was the Lupercalia festival - fertility festival. The Catholics obviously didn't agree with this and some dude was killed for marrying people illegally or something and hence he is a saint now. Fast forwarding a few hundred years to now when it is a florists and an escort's busiest time of year.

Christmas is another one. If you see all the traditions that we have now, they are a massive concoction of older and definitely less (again) Catholic traditions. The red meat that is eaten on Christmas day - it used to be cheaper to slaughter the cows 'cos it was just cheaper than feeding them during winter. Santa flying over us during one night - from the German god Oden. Virgin birth? - birth of the unconquerable sun - Mithra (an ancient Roman god) being born from a rock on the 25Th.







And today...Mothers day. A tradition probably starting way back in Ancient Greece where they praised a day to the goddess of all mothers. But the modern one came about due to some woman in the USA who wanted to honour her mother and basically persuaded the US congress to make it a federal holiday. I think that's quite a sweet thing to do. Her original intentions were for people to spend the day in church and then write handwritten letters to their mothers. White carnations for mothers-past and pink or red carnations for mothers-present. By the 20's it had boomed and become so commerical that this woman was then petitioning to have the holiday abolished! Ironic isn't it...what is even  more so - she never had kids to commemorate her.

So, Even though traditions are nice and sweet, it is interesting to know where they come from and why people do them, and even though it is pre-manufactured I guess it serves as a yearly reminder to appreciate your mother or father or partner or local ground-hog. But should there really be just one day to act like you appreciate someone else? I prefer making random little gestures that show someone you care for them - all through the year.

tschuss - P