Right so I’ve been a wee bit slack this week on account of some disgustingly early starts.

I’ve been neglecting my buns-sculpting routines, living off leftovers and experiencing a lot of unplanned naps.

So I haven’t whipped up anything special for today’s schedule posts, even though I had the whole day to do so yesterday. Thankfully, I have a whole bunch of Word Documents on my desktop containing half-written columns that I’ve abandoned but can’t bring myself to place in the digital trashcan. They’re mostly rants that I’ve gone on after being inspired by the muse of unwarranted rage at trivial things. Halfway through writing it down, I either run out of steam or, faced with my reasoning in black and white, I realise that perhaps I’m overreacting and back the heck off. I decide that no one needs to read it and it’s best to just let it go.

I was going to revive one of these I-will-die-on-this-hill kind of rants, but as I started to write the introduction to something that ticks me off about mileage, I referenced one very timely example of something that makes me cranky: Mother’s Day.

Now, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with the day itself – I certainly hope to one day be congratulated for squeezing life out of my vagina with a luxe pair of silky pyjamas (the plan is to have children when I can afford to keep them alive while still living like a diva, soooo I may never reproduce). It’s nice to say thanks to the woman who brewed you up from a tiny zygote into a person.

But it’s the gramma of Mother’s Day that shits me.

I’m not often a grammar Nazi because that would be extremely hypocritical of me, as someone who often commits cardinal sins against the English language. In fact, I’ve probably already committed many in this blog post. I think it’s about writing the way you talk and, even though the way you talk doesn’t always align with the rules of grammar, you’re still able to communicate your message to someone. I’m liberal in that sense – language is fluid and evolves with society and what was incorrect 60 years ago might not suit the uses we have for language today. And, while I’m at it, who even gets to decide what the “rules” are for gramma anyhow?! But I digress. This is a conversation to be had over a bottle of wine.

BUT I’ve been irked by the apostrophe placement in Mother’s Day – and Father’s Day – since I became aware of news organisations style guides. A style guide is a like a grammar bible for a news organisation to follow to ensure that all copy is consistent. It sounds very boring, but it’s actually quite interesting if you unpack it all. Again, a cracking topic to discuss over a bottle of wine.

Anyway, the style has always been Mother’s Day. And I thought it should be Mothers’ Day, because it’s a celebration of all the mothers out there. It’s not just a single mother’s day, but a day for a whole bunch of mothers. I’ve always been irate over it, but never actually looked into the issue. So I decided to do some scholarly research.

And, after reading three articles that appeared on the first page of Google results, I have a few things to impart.

Firstly, as I learned from a blog by a bloke called Rob Ashton, Mother’s Day was celebrated in the UK in the 17^thCentury, when it was known as Mothering Sunday. It was on the fourth Sunday in Lent and a day when apprentices and servants could take a break from their assumedly unpleasant lives to go home to visit their mums.

But this kind of died out there until World War II, when US troops brought over the Mother’s Day tradition and made it cool again (I would like to think they said Mother’s Day was so “fetch”, but I haven’t seen any research that would confirm this).

And on May 9, 1914 the US president Woodrow Wilson – who you’ll remember was Bart’s inspiration for the name of the man who was writing love notes to his teacher Mrs Krabappel – signed a document declaring the second Sunday in May was a day for set aside “as a public expression of love and reverence for the mothers of our country”.

And on that proclamation was Mother’s Day. Apostrophe between the R and the S.

But before you go blaming the Yanks for all this, there’s a point that goes deeper. The folk behind The Grammaphobia Blog go into the history before this declaration. There was a woman called Anna Jarvis who organised services to honour her mum after she died in May, 1905.

And this blog points to a dissertation by the historian Katharine Antolini about this this Jarvis lady, who apparently Jarvis wanted the singular possessive to emphasise that it was the day to honour your own, personal mother, not mothers in general.

So, I guess that’s that.

I have no way to end this, so I’m just going to leave you with a link to the best song about mothers there is. I implore you to click on this link.

Happy Mother’s Day!