Happy freakin' Mother's Day!

Mother's Day. Second only to Valentine's Day in annoying radio ads, reminding us ... Sunday is Mother's Day ... don't forget, Sunday is Mother's Day ... Mother's Day is Sunday. How can I forget?

Here's an interesting fact:

In the United States, Mother's Day was loosely inspired by the British day and was imported by social activist Julia Ward Howe after the Civil War. However, it was intended as a call to unite women against war. In 1870, she wrote the Mother's Day Proclamation as a call for peace and disarmament.

How's about we bring that little custom back? Too late now I guess. Oh well, once John McCain is elected, we'll have plenty of opportunities to call for peace and disarmament.

In 1907, Anna Jarvis, started the crusade to found a memorial day for women.

In 1914 President Woodrow Wilson declared the first national Mother's Day, as a day for American citizens to show the flag in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war.

I think we're a little far afield of that particular celebration these days.

Nine years after the first official Mother's Day, commercialization of the U.S. holiday became so rampant that Anna Jarvis herself became a major opponent of what the holiday had become.

Now we're talking. You'll run out of fingers and toes if you try to count the number of occasions that have run afoul of their original intent.

According to IBISWorld, a publisher of business research, Americans will spend approximately $2.6 billion on flowers, $1.53 billion on pampering gifts like spa treatments, and another $68 million on greeting cards. Mother's Day will generate about 7.8% of the US jewelry industry's annual revenue in 2008. Americans are expected to spend close to $3.51 billion in 2008 on dining out for Mother's Day.

I always think about the people who have to work on holidays like this. Undoubtedly, some of them are mothers, and they'll be cooking, waiting tables and cleaning up after us when we're dining out.

Greeting cards are another scam. Five bucks for a little verse that says something you could just as easily say yourself. Especially now, with so many people having color printers and a Staples nearby, I'm surprised that we still spend as much as we do on cards. I bought one.

Mother's Day is a bit of a scam, too. A couple of guys at work were telling me that they have to get something for their wives because they're mothers. I told them they're suckers and that Mother's Day is the children's job not the husband. It isn't Wife's Day.

By comparison, fathers get screwed on Father's Day. Quick - when is Father's Day? Time's up. Maybe they get screwed because the best gift you can give a lot of guys is to leave them alone for 24 hours? Or maybe I'm bitter because I haven't had a Father's Day in 41 years?

I miss Father's Day.

It's a good thing I still have Mother's Day. I have to go, the 2 o'clock seating was the only reservation I could get. I told mom not to eat lunch!