Australian Women's Weekly (1933 - 1982), Saturday 3 December 1949, page 18


DECEMBER 3, 1949

À BIG MONTH FOR MOTHERS

1TJECEMBER blows in

this week with the hot breath of summer and a wave of Christmas panic.

What a month for mothers !

It is their time of trialfour weeks when there isn't enough time, enough money, enough strength for the hundred and one demands on them.

There are the break-up concerts requiring fancy dress, and the Christmas jobs for favorite charities with their call for plain

hard work.

There's the little matter

of running up a new frock for Mary and a wistful wondering whether there could possibly be time to

renovate that old dinner dress for the club dance on

Christmas Eve. (Mothers, after all, don't necessarily have one foot in the grave!)

Add such trifling matters as baking and icing the cakes and ensuring that the final mixing of the pudding is timed for when every-body's home to have a stir.

Grandma's presents must be bought for everybody and the Christmas cards addressed; toy shop rounds, bulky parcels hidden in wardrobes, grocers' lists and sudden wilful extravagances.

Oh, surely this is Christ-

mas indeed!

A month of trial for mothers, yes, but a month of joy, too. The joy of giv-ing and planning to give, joy hugged in secret antici-pation and lived over many times . . . mothers' joy.

It mounts and mounts as

day by day December flies by to bring the family

festival nearer and nearer.

But where, from what mystic, primal source, do mothers draw the energy for it all?