Mother’s Day: 3 Guidelines to buying your mom a gift

Lifestyle

Published: 2018-03-21 12:03

Last Updated: 2024-03-28 05:14


There's still time to buy your mum a Mother's Day gift. (Earth911.com)
There's still time to buy your mum a Mother's Day gift. (Earth911.com)

Mother’s day is a day that honours mothers and motherhood. Despite the attempts of companies to trick us into buying the next best kitchen gadget or beauty product, the celebration is essentially an opportunity to step away from our daily routine and genuinely appreciate our mothers.

Getting your mother a gift in the last minute is not the ideal scenario but there is no need to panic! Here are some guidelines that can help you narrow down your options.

Think about what she needs, which is not necessarily what she wants. It might seem counterintuitive to ignore the memory of your mother telling you she liked that pair of shoes a few weeks ago but bear with me.

Your mother may be a stay at home mom and even though she doesn’t know she needs to go out more, the change would be refreshing. So how about signing her up for a few classes of… something she might be into? A class in handicrafts, English or zumba?

The example works the other way around too. If your mom works too much then maybe she doesn’t need a better planning gadget but just some time off. Which brings us to the second rule of thumb.

Time is the most precious gift. You can go about this in a few ways. First, you may decide to help your mother with chores and errands she usually does herself which will be a nice surprise but will also give her more time to just sit back and relax.

Secondly, you may choose to spend time with her and finally get around to helping her with a task she wouldn’t finish alone. This may involve tasks of which you are not a particular fan; visiting your mother’s friend and playing with their dog, picking out and putting up new curtains in the living room, or getting documents from a government institution, (yes, I know you’ll have to wait in line, but you will be waiting together).

Yet another option would be to spend more time together. If you lead a busy life and you rarely have time to spend hours on end together, then this might be the right time to set aside the coming weekend for some mother-child (yes child, because you will always be her baby) time and either, go to the theatre, a live music event, hiking or visiting members of the extended family.

Nostalgia is good. I admit this may be a little cryptic but this is how to turn it into a good gift idea. Remember that feeling you get when you see an item that brings back memories from your childhood? Try to evoke that feeling in your mother.

It may come in the form of a perfume that she wore in the 90s, a box of turkish delight (aka rahat) and biscuits, or a turning some digital photos from the past 10 years into a physical photo album, anything goes.

Those were our guidelines for gift-picking and we hope you like them and share your ideas with us. We at Roya decided to surprise a few moms this Mother’s day and here you can see what went down during the event! You can also surprise your mom, capture the deed in a video and send it to us at [email protected]

We will make a video from your responses!

On a side note, if you’re wondering why Arab countries celebrate Mother’s day on March 21, you can thank Egypt for introducing the practice.

The first time the date was observed was in 1956 and soon after other countries had followed suit. The Egyptian journalist Mustafa Amin was among the first advocates for adopting a day dedicated to our mothers.

The day fittingly follows the spring equinox as countries in the northern hemisphere mark the beginning of spring where Mother Earth nurtures rebirth and regrowth.