So Out It's In

M is for the millions who'll be deluged.

O is for the oddball things they'll get

(Neiman-Marcus' carrying case for Mom's contact lenses; Tiffany's sterling vermeil decorative rose for $110).

T is for the tremendous business volume (more than $1 billion).

H is for the heavy push on Dad.

E is for the easy credit payments.

R is for the rancor that it spreads.

Put them all together, and they spell the biggest, boomingest Mother's Day spree (May 14) since Oedipus wrecked Thebes. On the business side, the nation's retailers, urged loudly on by the National Committee on the Observance of Mother's Day, last week were promoting a variety of stunts to pull in the trade: sketching contests of Mom, 25-words-or-less compositions on "I like my Mom because . . ."; prizes for the oldest grandmother, the youngest, the most fecund. On the straight promotion side, organizations were choosing Mothers of the Year from the 50 states, from which would be chosen the national Mother of the Year. There will be TV Mother of the Year, Cub Scout Mother of the Year--everything, almost, but the High School Mother of the Year. All in all, the heavy promotion made it hard for the serious organizations to keep things spiritual.

Along with all the hustle came the annual vociferous difference of opinion on whether all this is good or phony. Says a National Council of Churches official: "One of the things every minister dreads is preaching a Mother's Day sermon. Those with courage don't." Some women would just as soon forget the whole thing. Says New Yorker Betty Carter, mother of five: "Hell, I feel like Mother India all year round. I see no point in being reminded of it once a year." Recalls Actress Florence Eldridge (Mrs. Fredric March): "When my two children were young, I had to sit at the table with a crown of flowers on Mother's Day. It felt like a crown of thorns."

But if pressed, most mothers will concede that they enjoy the affection anyway, commercialized or not. In fact, an anti-anti reaction may be developing. For many people, Mother's Day is so far out that it's in--like eating at the Automat or listening to Tchaikovsky. Although not necessarily an authority on anything this side of Samoa, Anthropologist Margaret Mead summarizes this feeling: "Mother's Day is synthetic. In our culture we just make up things as we go along. But I don't just laugh at it. Some kind of ritual is important in family life. I say that anything that sets one day off from another and individualizes a family is important." Manhattan's Dan Seman could not agree more heartily. Says Seman, who runs the trade division for the National Committee on the Observance of Mother's Day: "It's like Christmas. If it weren't a gift-giving as well as a holy day, it wouldn't have the popularity it has. You gotta have a concrete symbol. If Christmas was just a church observance, it wouldn't have that heartfelt significance. And don't forget," he adds, "every family has a mother-in-law, too."

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