Mother’s Day has been a target of the Marxist Left

Last week many people all over the world may have celebrated the Cinco de Mayo holiday, without really knowing why they were celebrating. The holiday is often mistakenly assumed to be the celebration of Mexican independence. But it is not linked in that way, and in Mexico, this holiday is not a major holiday as it celebrates a minor victory in a major invasion of the nation that led to Mexico’s loss of independence. This is a clear example of a holiday celebration that has lost any semblance of relation to its original cause; now it is a celebration just for fun, but in recent years the Left had sought to politicize the holiday.

Last week many people all over the world may have celebrated the Cinco de Mayo holiday, without really knowing why they were celebrating. The holiday is often mistakenly assumed to be the celebration of Mexican independence. But it is not linked in that way, and in Mexico, this holiday is not a major holiday as it celebrates a minor victory in a major invasion of the nation that led to Mexico’s loss of independence. This is a clear example of a holiday celebration that has lost any semblance of relation to its original cause; now it is a celebration just for fun, but in recent years the Left had sought to politicize the holiday. Today the Left is attempting to politicize Mother’s Day, which has already happened in many countries around the world - one of them being Mexico. It is hard to believe that Mother’s Day could be politicized, but America’s most recent president, Barack Obama, demonstrated that almost everything could be viewed as, or transformed into, a political reality. The old adage of “divide and conquer” is quite simple but usually very effective. The first step is to steal and own the issue. Consider that the Left has done this with May Day, and Labor Day in the U.S., as well as more recently with Cinco de Mayo. Mother’s Day has been a target of the Left or Marxists just like any other holiday. Although those on the Left still offer lip support for motherhood, albeit in a very limited way, in reality Mother’s Day must honestly hold little value to liberals and Leftists. Today, there are efforts among the women on the Left proclaiming that Mother’s Day should be returned to its “true” roots, which is a form of peace activism that would be translated into anti-war activism rather than a true pursuit of peace. Such efforts to return Mother’s Day to its “true” roots is an attempt to politicize the holiday.

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Last week many people all over the world may have celebrated the Cinco de Mayo holiday, without really knowing why they were celebrating. The holiday is often mistakenly assumed to be the celebration of Mexican independence. But it is not linked in that way, and in Mexico, this holiday is not a major holiday as it celebrates a minor victory in a major invasion of the nation that led to Mexico’s loss of independence. This is a clear example of a holiday celebration that has lost any semblance of relation to its original cause; now it is a celebration just for fun, but in recent years the Left had sought to politicize the holiday. Today the Left is attempting to politicize Mother’s Day, which has already happened in many countries around the world - one of them being Mexico. It is hard to believe that Mother’s Day could be politicized, but America’s most recent president, Barack Obama, demonstrated that almost everything could be viewed as, or transformed into, a political reality. The old adage of “divide and conquer” is quite simple but usually very effective. The first step is to steal and own the issue. Consider that the Left has done this with May Day, and Labor Day in the U.S., as well as more recently with Cinco de Mayo. Mother’s Day has been a target of the Left or Marxists just like any other holiday. Although those on the Left still offer lip support for motherhood, albeit in a very limited way, in reality Mother’s Day must honestly hold little value to liberals and Leftists. Today, there are efforts among the women on the Left proclaiming that Mother’s Day should be returned to its “true” roots, which is a form of peace activism that would be translated into anti-war activism rather than a true pursuit of peace. Such efforts to return Mother’s Day to its “true” roots is an attempt to politicize the holiday. The justification for the politicization of Mother’s Day is usually based upon Julia Ward Howe’s “Mother’s Day Proclamation,” from 1870, which was basically a cry of despair or a lament over the incredible loss of life during the American Civil War. The contradiction at the heart of Howe’s poem is that she was an abolitionist as well as a feminist. The sheer logic of an anti-war message aimed at the Civil War would neutralize the purpose of the war as the primary way slavery came to be abolished in the United States. Being opposed to war is not the problem, as war is an outright aberration of the purpose of life. The fundamental contradiction is that without the Civil War, slavery would have persisted, and possibly could have mushroomed in the U.S. To extend the logic to the present - to return Mother’s Day to its “original roots” of an anti-war intent would normally include the mourning of the loss of life, which was a central aspect of Howe’s poem. Nevertheless, women on the Left who currently advocate a return to this peace activism would likely also support abortion, which generates loss of life of unborn children. This represents sheer hypocrisy, and an entirely contradiction of logic. On the one hand life is important, so peace is valuable; but on the other hand life is not so important, and abortion is acceptable. The Left use what they can, abuse who they can, and attempt to control as much as they can, and this is true with Mother’s Day in history. Mother’s Day was a holiday created in the U.S. by Anna Jarvis for very specific purposes, which clearly were aimed at offering one’s love to mom for all the wonderful things she did in raising a responsible child. How could that be politicized? Prime historical examples in the Western Hemisphere can be found to the south - in Mexico. After the holiday became an official U.S. designated holiday in 1914, the government of Alvaro Obregon in Mexico imported the holiday to his country in 1922, after the Great War. Obregon became a conservative, after he was successful in the revolt against and the assassination of Venustiano Carranza. His government utilized the Mother’s Day holiday to promote a more conservative or more family oriented role for women, and especially promoted the value of mothers in this time. However, the Mexican Socialists, similar to the Left today, criticized such a traditional role of moms as nothing more than “breeders.”

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Later political developments in Mexico’s history led to a Leftist being elected as President of Mexico in 1934, essentially having the support of the founder of the dominant political party that ended the rule of the strong-arm military dictators. The Revolutionary National Party (PNR - now the Institutional Revolutionary Party) had leftist tendencies and President Lázaro Cárdenas (1934 - 1940) made Castro-like moves when he nationalized the oil industry in Mexico. But, during his reign of power, Cardenas promoted Mother’s Day as a “patriotic” holiday. However, the Cardenas administration seriously tried to reduce the religious aspects of the holiday, especially the strong influence of the Catholic Church. The Left felt that the conservative Catholic Church, which had supported the nobility, and the strong-arm military generals for so long, was far too influential in controlling women - the government even went so far as to impose regulations over Mother’s Day! The efforts in Mexico aimed at separating religious influences over Mother’s Day ended after President Manuel Camacho was elected, as he was an avowed Catholic. Camacho’s wife, Soledad Orozco García, helped to promote the holiday, but as a state-sponsored event, and the Catholic Church bought into it. Orozco’s involvement helped to mitigate the serious anti-Catholic sentiments and divisions instigated by previous Leftist or Marxist influences in the Mexican government. However, such influences still exist and the fact Mother’s Day was imported from the U.S. is viewed as a capitalistic, or imperialistic, imposition into the Mexican culture by the Marxists. In the present, many scholars believe that the revolutionary governments that were born from the Mexican revolution abandoned their efforts to manipulate or control Mother’s Day celebrations. That may be possible, but not probable. The Left never seems to rest, and today, as indicated there exists efforts among Leftist women and their male counterparts who want to politicize Mother’s Day in the U.S. More insidious are Leftist propagandists who seem to work overtime to convince people that the life which is growing inside a mother’s womb is not fully human. This is very much like Southern slave owners and their propagandists who argued prior to the American Civil War that blacks were not human. Today feminists and Leftists in America again wish to further contort and distort the value and meaning of Mother’s Day. Yet, Anna Jarvis never intended Mother’s Day to be political; she even had serious trouble with the holiday becoming over-commercialized. Anna Jarvis may have expressed it best when she once explained her true purpose in creating Mother’s Day:

To revive the dormant filial love and gratitude we owe to those who gave us birth. To be a home-tie for the absent, to obliterate family estrangement… To make us better children by getting us closer to the hearts of our good mothers… To brighten the lives of good mothers. To have them know we appreciate them, though we do not show it as often as we ought… Mother’s Day is to remind us of our duty before it is too late. This day is intended that we may make new resolutions for a more active thought to our dear mothers. By words, gifts, acts of affection, and in every way possible, give her pleasure, and make her heart glad every day, and constantly keep in memory Mother’s Day.

In this line of logic, let everyone who truly cares, keep “mother” in Mother’s Day! Each individual can resist the “political correctness” of disdain directed toward moms who choose to raise their own children rather than enter the workforce, or who choose to take personal responsibility to home-school their kids. The good fight is left to those who truly care - to celebrate Mother’s Day as intended. It is one more aspect of the good fight.