Mother's Day

Honoring a mother is a command of Yahuah. The fifth word of the Ten Words puts it plainly. The question this study raises is not whether mothers should be honored — they should — but whether a single calendar day Yahuah did not appoint is the place to do it.

The command is continuous. Honor is owed every day a mother lives, and her memory is to be kept after she has gone. There is no Scripture that sets aside one day in a year for this duty.

The Proverbs 31 woman is praised by her household as a way of life, not as a yearly observance.

The modern American Mother's Day was founded in 1908 by Anna Jarvis, a Methodist, who wanted to honor her own late mother. Her intent was sincere. She later spent her life fighting against what the holiday became, and she died disillusioned with its commercialization.

The honest historical picture is that the day itself was not invented as goddess worship. The pattern it slots into, however, is older and worth knowing.

• Rome: The Hilaria festival honored Cybele — the Magna Mater, “Great Mother” — each spring with feasting, processions, and rites devoted to the mother of the gods.
• Greece: Spring festivals to Rhea, mother of the Greek pantheon, served the same function.
• England: Mothering Sunday, observed on the fourth Sunday of Lent, sent worshipers back to their “mother church” — a phrase the Roman Catholic Church ties to Mary as the Mother of the Church. The American holiday is not a direct descendant of Mothering Sunday, but it occupies the same calendar slot in the English-speaking world.

So the modern observance is not consciously a revival of mother-goddess worship. It is, however, a day set apart for motherhood that did not come from Yahuah's mouth. That is a smaller charge than “pagan,” and it is the one that actually fits the evidence.

Yahuah listed His appointed times in Leviticus 23. He left a person's mother off that list — not because mothers do not matter, but because the honor due her is daily, not annual. The fifth word is among the weightiest commands in Torah, and it cannot be discharged by a card and brunch once a year and forgotten the other 364.