Many children today have decided their mothers should join the digital age. Nader Habib remembers how Mother's Day has changed The first blossom of spring is not something you would always look for in the busy streets of Cairo. But you can look for something else: the tell-tale signs of Mother's Day. In the ancient world, celebrations at this time of year were usually about fertility, so perhaps it was fitting that the readers of an Egyptian newspaper in the 1950s also decided that the first day of spring should be a homage to all mothers. The idea began with brothers Mustafa and Ali Amin, the prominent journalists who founded the newspaper Akhbar Al-Yom. One day, Ali Amin received a letter from a mother complaining about her children, and then another mother showed up at Mustafa Amin's office to ask him to tell her story. Widowed at a young age, she had raised her children alone, and now that they were all married she rarely saw them. The brothers decided to start a national campaign. Ali Amin had a daily column entitled Fikra (Idea) at the time, and he wrote that other countries had mother's days, so why didn't Egypt? Readers of the column responded enthusiastically, and a later poll showed that the preferred day was 21 March. The state obliged with a public holiday and the rest is history. However, children often have different ideas about how to celebrate the day. And many of them buy gifts not only for their mothers, but also for their female teachers at school. Ahmed Farag, a media specialist, remembers the days when children used to save to buy suitable gifts for their mothers. "The love today's children have for their mothers is no less, but their choice of gifts is different," Farag says. He blames today's economic conditions for the fact that children can no longer afford the items of clothes, and even jewellery, that mothers used to get in his childhood. "The things a child can afford to buy today are of less value than they used to be," Farag says. "A ten-pound note used to go a long way, but not any more." He also remembers the time when children used to buy kitchen utensils and garments for their mothers. Now children want to buy mobile phones or fancy electronic items. "Unlike the gifts of the past, electronic items don't keep their value. I have two children. When I was their age I used to buy my mother a length of fabric and she would have it tailored to her taste. Now my daughters buy their mother cosmetics, or sometimes an MP3 or a memory card," Farag says with a sigh. What bothers Farag most is the new habit children have of buying gifts for women teachers. "I don't think teachers should accept gifts from students, let alone solicit them. I know of teachers who ask their students to buy them specific things, such as vases or clocks or glassware sets. Can you believe that?" Would teachers actually grade their students according to the gifts students buy them? "You never know. I guess the bad economy could be taking its toll on the teaching profession," Farag says. For his part, Mahmoud Saad doesn't seem to mind the gifts that children sometimes buy for teachers, for he sees them as secondary care-takers. "Just as mothers work closely with their children, so teachers do the same, and the children want to show their gratitude," he says. Saad's wife is the one in charge of buying the teachers' gifts. "She knows them better and is more familiar with their tastes and needs. You don't buy the same gift for a married teacher that you would give to an unmarried one," he explains. Another person interviewed by Al-Ahram Weekly, Mervat, recalls that it was her father who used to buy the gifts when she was little. "He would get the gifts and give them to us to give to our mother. Usually, it was all household stuff, things for the entire family," she says with a chuckle. Now Mervat and her siblings share the work and buy one big gift for their mother. "Everyone pitches in, except of course the brother who lives abroad. He just makes a phone call," she says. For her part, Mervat gets three gifts a year, one from her children, another from her mother, and a third from her mother-in-law. "It all started when my children were too young to buy gifts. My mother promised to keep buying me gifts until the children grew up, and then never stopped. Eventually, my mother-in-law, God bless her, got into the act as well." As for gifts for teachers, Mervat is cautious in her judgement. "My mother, an elementary school teacher, wouldn't hear of giving presents to teachers for many reasons, including the fact that not every student can afford it. Also, there is the concern that when they are disciplined students might feel it is because the teacher didn't like their gift. On the upside, schools tend to be all about fun and games on Mother's Day, so it's not all a bad thing." As more and more children become enamoured of digital technology, they are less likely to shop for clothes and cosmetics and more likely to buy mobile phones and MP3s. But gift-shop owners have not started to complain about a lack of business. One store manager, Abdel-Aziz, says he offers up to 50 per cent discounts at his shop for the entire week preceding Mother's Day. "During a downturn such as this, we take all the business we can get," he says. Finally, some families react to the death of a mother by shifting their attention to the eldest sister, who becomes the recipient of motherly gifts. It is as if the whole family is saying that the maternal love is still there, but the central idea is that motherhood lives on. As the Lebanese star Magda Al-Rumi sang: "God prolong her life so that I may love her more."
