ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the various campaigns to promote mother's day and father's day in the Netherlands. It deals with the types of responses positive, negative or aimed at negotiating a middle ground to these initiatives. Lectures and writings about the nature of popular culture, traditions or folklore; exhibitions of material expressions and a variety of live performances and staged enactments have exposed the general public to the view that the allegedly timeless culture of rural society contained superior moral qualities. Far removed from the superficial and internationally oriented culture of life in the cities, the simple utterances and manners of people in the countryside retained truthfulness, originality and authenticity, only to be unearthed by perceptive scholars. From 1931 onwards, the Netherlands conformed to practices in the United States and some other European countries by establishing the second Sunday in May as mother's day.
