Celebrate Mother’s Day

Ready to celebrate Mother’s Day? In the States, it’s celebrated on the second Sunday of May. But here in Mexico it’s celebrated on a fixed date, the 10^th of May. This year the celebrations coincide,

How did Mexico come to institute this observance? In the early part of the1900s, women were beginning to assert their political, professional, and contraceptive rights. In an effort to promote motherhood, the Mexican women’s magazine El Hogar and La Asociación de las Damas Católicas (the Association of Catholic Ladies) joined to oppose what they saw as a threat to traditional values. Rafael Alducín, editor of the Mexico City newspaper El Excelsior, wrote and published an editorial that affirmed the ties between motherhood and Mexico’s family values.

Mother’s Day was celebrated in Mexico for the first time on 10 May 1922.  El Hogar sponsored a beautiful baby photo contest in conjunction with the first Mother’s Day that was quite successful.After the Archbishop of Mexico gave his official sanction to the holiday, images of the Madonna and Child began to appear on Mother’s Day cards and posters.

Mothers’ Day is an observance, not a public holiday in Mexico. However, some public offices have been known to close early in the afternoon so employees can spend some of the day with their mothers or mother figures.