A new national day for sisters would be the mother of all inventions

ISN’T it strange that we have Mother’s Day and Father’s Day but neither a Sister’s Day nor a day devoted to appreciation of brothers?

Apart altogether from the fact that each of the established days of celebration are marketing devices designed to fleece the offspring, they’re also foci for emotional blackmail. Daughters (mostly) and sons (or their wives/partners) feel they have to go out and purchase cards carrying the implication that their parents were and are the joyous centre of their lives, even if the reverse is the case.

“Mother’s Day is the worst day of my year,” a friend told me recently, on his way to his mother-in-law’s house for a knees-up to mark her motherhood.