Does a Printable Mothers Day Card Say "you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world"?

2009-05-09T10:46:00.000-07:00

The search for Mother's Day gifts is on, as it is every year at this time. Google trends shows spikes of interest for the term mother's day at two times of the year: one is around the time of Mothering Sunday in the United Kingdom which falls around the third week in March and the other is around the second Sunday in May for many other countries of the world. It has it's roots in the Christian tradition of "Mothering Sunday" in the United Kingdom of the 16th century. It was at that time of year, the fourth Sunday in the tradition of Lent, that people paid a visit to their mother's church.

Though this was the practice in the United Kingdom for centuries before, the modern Mother's Day only began in the United States and Canada because of the efforts of Anna Jarvis to have it recognized as a national holiday. It took seven years from the time that she first conceived the idea in 1907 while commemorating her mother's death two years earlier, until 1914 when it was made official. The term was actually first used in 1870 by Julia Ward Howe - the famous American writer of the 'Battle Hymn of the Republic' - in 'Mother's Day Proclamation' calling women of every country to a congress for the purpose of promoting the "amicable settlement of international questions". It was a response to the bloody American Civil and Franco-Prussian Wars.

Although Anna Jarvis gave us Mother's Day, she later campaigned against it. She had become embittered by the commercialization of what she had only intended as a f0rmal encouragement to "write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world". On that note, she didn't consider a printed greeting card to be sufficient appreciation for Mom. She was so disillusioned by what Mother's Day had become that she spent the rest of her life and savings campaigning against it!

She was obviously unsuccessful in the end. Mother's Day continues, and people continue to buy printed mothers day cards for Mom. I don't think that getting Mom a printable mothers day card goes wholly unappreciated. But it might be a good idea, taking the suggestion from the originator of the holiday itself, to go a little bit extra and maybe write a note or call Mom to tell her you love her as well.

2008-12-14T09:14:00.000-08:00

Parents and kids be aware that you may not be able to get to see The Big Green Help at the moment unless the popularity of nick.com's site wanes in the next few hours. When I tried to go to nick.com moments ago, I was unable to. I could only guess that the volume of traffic may have caused a bottleneck on the server.

This is a hot topic this morning! In fact Google rates it at the highest or volcanic level in trends.

What is the Big Green Help? It is what Nickeodeon calls their initiative to help the environment. They have spent a lot of time trying to educate youngsters environmental resposibility. It seems to be working too judging by the popularity of this mornings launch of the latest online game at nick.com/biggreenhelp.

When you go there, you are invited to download Big Green Help to your computer and then participate as one of nick.com famous characters such as SpongeBob or TimmyTurner in the massively multiplayer online game or MMOG.

I do say massively without irony as according to the writer at Animation Insider (1), a generation of 40 million kid volunteers has been created by The Big Help since 1993. That might explain why I was unable to play the game just now after downloading to my desktop.

According to Nickelodeon, the big idea here is for kids to discover that they can be a powerful influence on their world. In the kids forum at nick.com, the message they want kids to get is "Nickelodeon's Big Green Help is all about helping YOU find simple, positive ways to help protect the Earth every day"(2).

References:

1. http://www.animationinsider.net/article.php?articleID=1928
2. http://www.nick.com/mynick/messageboards/viewboard.jhtml?bID=105726

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Does a Printable Mothers Day Card Say "you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world"?