{"id":70356,"date":"2018-10-15T09:02:37","date_gmt":"2018-10-15T07:02:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/?p=70356"},"modified":"2018-10-15T09:02:37","modified_gmt":"2018-10-15T07:02:37","slug":"searching-for-local-face-of-mothers-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/2018\/10\/15\/searching-for-local-face-of-mothers-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Searching for local face of Mother\u2019s Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Richard Chirombo <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Leicestershire-born British essayist and lawyer, Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800 \u2013 1859), may be long dead and relatively unknown in Third World countries, but his observation that some things in life belong more to the age than the people of that age ring true today.<\/p>\n

For instance, the burial ceremony of a family member in a remote village in Makuni Village, Rumphi, or Bitchayi Village in Salima, is an event of the people, and not the age, in these respective areas because it has no national relevance, while the composition of the Malawi National Anthem by a hitherto ordinary man, Michael Sauka, is a thing of the age because his creation (the national anthem) had eternal characteristics that gave it a life of its own.<\/p>\n

In most cases, one of the things that characterise things of the age is the creation of national and public holidays to commemorate them. For instance, the Malawi Government\u2019s calendar of national and public holidays this year saw Malawians commemorating New Year\u2019s Day (January 01); Chilembwe Day (January 15); Martyrs\u2019 Day (March 03); Labour Day (May 01); Independence Day (July 06); and, today, Mothers\u2019 Day, among other events.<\/p>\n

The second characteristic of things that belong to an age, enthuses human rights activist Ken williams Mhango, is that various nation-states have their own version of reincarnated national days and public holidays.<\/p>\n

He cites Mothers\u2019 Day in the United States (US), saying \u201cTheir incarnation of Mothers\u2019 Day was, indeed, created by someone. It is impossible for, say, all the people of Malawi to develop the idea that \u2018Let us create a Mothers\u2019 Day, or this other day, at the same time. It takes someone: may be the Head of State, or someone in authority acting on a suggestion from people\u2019.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Student-historian Owen Petersen Misoya concurs with Mhango, saying there is always an individual who brings up an idea. He says, even though the idea of Mothers\u2019 Day did not originate from Malawi, there must be someone, apart from the Head of State who established the day, who brought that idea forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe, as a nation should find that individual. And we must record the name of that individual and keep it at heart. You see, we have a very big problem as a nation; that of poor record-keeping. If we cared about records, we would have documented the name of that individual but we have not done that. That is why, I am not surprised, we do not have the record about Mlauli and Mbona-the rain-makers,\u201d<\/em> Misoya says.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What is the cost of forsaking records? <\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cPeople perish,\u201d Fred Kwacha, of Chipembedzo cha Makolo (Traditional religion), says. \u201cAnd that is why we have pestilence and so many problems in Malawi. People have forsaken Mbona and other ancestors, and are worshipping foreign gods, and all this is because people do not appreciate the good things Mbona and our ancestors did. So, they adopt anything foreign.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

However, while it may be too late to redeem the history\u2014bit by bit\u2014of the likes of Mbona, Misoya says it is not too late for Malawians to trace the individual, or individuals, who came up with the idea of introducing a Mothers\u2019 Day in Malawi.<\/p>\n

In the case of the US of America, for example, the holiday of Mothers\u2019 Day- which is observed throughout the world to honour mothers- the incarnation of Mother\u2019s Day was created by Anna Jarvis in 1908 and became an official U.S. holiday in 1914, according to official records in the US.<\/p>\n

The irony is that Jarvis later attempted to denounce the holiday, angered by the level of commercialisation of the day, and spent the latter part of her life trying to remove it from the calendar. This time, though, she was not as successful and, today, people in various parts of the world continue showering mothers with an assortment of gifts.<\/p>\n

Global perspective <\/strong><\/p>\n

Malawians can, however, find solace in the fact that the origins of Mothers\u2019 Day are well-documented in Greek mythology, dating as far back as the ancient annual spring festival the Greeks dedicated to maternal goddesses such as Rhea, the wife of Cronus and the mother of many deities of Greek mythology.<\/p>\n

Internet research also revealed that Ancient Romans celebrated a spring festival they called Hilaria dedicated to Cybele, a mother goddess, which dated some 250 years before Jesus Christ was born.<\/p>\n

However, things have much changed in the past 50 years that no one would bet on Anna Jarvis being pleased.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Richard Chirombo Leicestershire-born British essayist and lawyer, Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800 \u2013 1859), may be long dead and relatively unknown in Third World countries, but his observation that some things in life belong more to the age than the people of that age ring true today. For instance, the burial ceremony of a family […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":70359,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70356"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70360,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70356\/revisions\/70360"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}