Nothing says 'no war' like chocolates, flowers and blenders

Last week I was talking to Maria about mother's day, and what I was going to write about. She told me the origins of Mother's Day in America. The origin of mother's Day is in a poem by Julia Howe: the mother's day proclamation:

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:
"We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

Mother's Day was started by a suffragist, abolitionist, pacifist, as an internationalist call to end war (although oddly enough she also wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic).

When Maria told me all this I thought it was cool but irrelevant. Mother's Day is celebrated on different days all over the world and I thought we had our mother's day at a different time from America. So while it was a cool story, it wasn't much

I was wrong, we celebrate mother's day the second Sunday in May - same as America. Which means anything you have done for your mother today is part of the fight against war.