LA O NA MAKUAHINE

Do you wonder where some holidays have come from?

I mean, other than being invented by Hallmark for the purpose of selling more cards.

The American Mother's Day was invented by an Anna Jarvis (this is straight from Wikipedia, which, as Michael Scott puts it, "the greatest source of information, because anyone can write on it").

Ms. Jarvis succeeded in 1914 in making Mother's Day a recognized holiday.

HOWEVER (and this is the fun part), "by the 1920's, (she) had become soured on the commercialization on the holiday.

Anne "and her sister spent their family inheritance campaigning against the holiday... she became embittered because too many people sent their mother a printed greeting card. As she said, 'A printed card means nothing except you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world.'"

Can anyone tell Hallmark this?

Or at least the 4,299,361 people who purchase a Mother's Day card

And people (like me) who FORGET to send Mother Day flowers to their mother-in-law until the day before and so end up spending a ridiculous amount of money so it'll GET there tomorrow.

Mother's Day has never been a huge thing with me - mostly because I was born on Mother's Day, so my birthday is always within that week.

And I like my birthday a WHOLE lot.

I like getting older (really, I do).

I love the fact that I was born on the 13th, since it's considered an unlucky number by so many people.

And I am egotistical enough to LOOOVE the fact that it's just MY day.

Not the (let's estimate here, population for the US for 2008 was put at 304,059,724 - divide that by, let's say 35% - carry the two - wait, is * to divide, or is that to determine pi - okay, let's go with) 10,6420,903 other mothers in the United States.

But in case you haven't already, CALL YOUR MOTHER.

(And although the urban myth is about Father's Day being the day that the most collect phones are made, did you know that Mother's Day is the SECOND?)