A Mother's Day Ritual: Making Fun of Mother's Day

While Mother's Day is grossly commercialized, it's still nice to express appreciation and connect with parents. I realized a few days ago that we actually have developed a nice counter-cultural Mother's Day ritual. My son calls and we make fun of the consumerist orgy of bubble bath, jewelry, cheesy cards, and general guilt-inducing marketing strategies around this manufactured holiday. And we also note how it sets moms up for feeling dissed if their kids don't buy into it and how children can lose a lot of points on this holiday. Mother's Day is a silly as Earth Day if you're inattentive to your mother, or Mother Earth, the other 364 days.
Then my son says nice things about my mothering and makes me feel great! I realized last week that if we didn't have this conversation about how silly it all is, followed by nice, supportive appreciation, I would feel very blue and neglected.
To those of you with living moms and who are moms, Happy Mother's Day. It's a nice time to honor your surrogate moms, too.