It’s not biblical. It’s not religious. It’s barely doctrinal—the Fifth Commandment: Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. [Exodus 20:12]. What it is, however, is big business. Emotional blackmail, making us all feel bad if we don’t give into this annual shakedown and cough up bucks for mom, is big business. It exploits sentimentality and, frankly, unsophistication as many moms, my own included, have this and most other holidays deeply ingrained into their emotional DNA. So much so that many of our mothers become emotionally wounded when we do not perform as expected. In the Roman religion the festival was in honor of the mother goddess Cybele and it took place during mid-March. As the Roman Empire and Europe converted to Christianity, Mothering Sunday celebrations became part of the liturgical calendar as Laetare Sunday, the fourth Sunday in Lent to honor the Virgin Mary and the “mother church.” [Wikipedia]

Holidays, for the most part, are pagan rituals. They echo back to rituals which included both orgies and human sacrifice to pagan gods. Most of those ancient activities blaspheme the God we serve, but still most of us blithely go about the business of erecting Christmas trees and hiding Easter eggs, buying candy hearts and dressing in costume to go door-to-door on All Hallow’s Eve.

I am, constantly, the odd man out when it comes to this foolish ignorance, and ignorance is, in fact, what it is. Far too many of simply go about doing things without ever wondering why. We do them because it is our tradition. We do them because we’ve always done them. But most if not all of this holiday—holy observance—is sin. Let’s not be ambiguous about it. I’ve heard pastors waste their breath trying to snow me about how we are now taking the devil’s tools and using them to glorify God. While I believe I might build a church in a whorehouse, I wouldn’t emulate the behavior of whores. I might convert a bar into a church but I wouldn’t continue to serve drunks there.

Being sent to the mall every six weeks to spend more money we don’t have to buy more useless junk we don’t need in order to recognize some arbitrary date on the calendar is simply insane. Running up debt is sin. And, while, having an annual date to celebrate mothers isn’t necessarily a bad or sinful idea, the emotional blackmail that is routinely practiced—on mother and on us—is not from God. God does not oppress us. God does not blackmail us. We should, frankly, celebrate our mothers every day, so she won’t be so emotionally needy that she must enforce some terrible emotional penalty on us for not jumping through hoops every May.

I know this disappoints many moms in my life, but I do not recognize or celebrate such nonsense. This is simply bondage, and Christ died to set us free.