December 8 – Mother's Day in Panama

nPosted on December 8, 2019

Key Points

nHappy Mother’s Day to all the moms in Panama!

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nMothers in Panama are receiving flowers, gifts, and cards that express the gratitude and love of their children.

nMany nations celebrate Mother’s Day in the springtime or summer, but folks in Panama celebrate it on the same day as the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.

nWhat’s that feast all about?

nIn many forms of the Christian religion, there is a story that a Jewish woman named Mary conceived the baby Jesus even though she was a virgin (of course, I am using the English names for both Mary and Jesus). The story explains that later Mary married Joseph, and they had children together, but Jesus was special. Joseph was not his father, this story tells us, and indeed Jesus had no human father; in a way, God was Jesus’s father, and in another way, Jesus was God.

In one form of the Christian religion, called Catholicism, there is another, similar story: Mary’s conception was meddled with by God so that she was born without “original sin.” This is often confused with the idea of a virgin birth, but it’s different. Basically, the idea of Mary’s “immaculate conception” is the idea that, even though she had a human mom and dad, Mary was special; she was born sinless, pure, better than other humans because of God’s meddling at the moment of her conception.

nMany nations of the world celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception as a holiday. These nations include some from Latin America (such as Chile and Panama), some from Asia (like the Philippines and Macau), some from Africa (like Seychelles and Equatorial Guinea), and some from Europe (like Spain and Liechtenstein). From my research, it seems that Panama is the only nation that coupled this feast day with its Mother’s Day celebration.