Try reading the last 2,000 years of REAL Christian history, instead of 500 years worth of PROTESTant history and you’ll get an idea of why Catholics and Orthodox hold Mary in such high esteem. By the way the great PROTESTant hero Martin Luther didn’t share your beliefs about the mother of God. His shared the same beliefs as Catholics do today.
Of course Mary should be held in high esteem, but as the Roman Catholic Church has developed its beliefs on her, that has turned into idolatry.
God’s Word makes clear, leaving no room for any other possibility: there is Creator and creature, and the proper service of every creature is to give all credit to the Creator and point all other creatures to the Creator if they mistakenly want to credit that particular creature. That is what Mary (who in God’s Word is called simply “the mother of Jesus”) did when Elizabeth addressed her. She said “my soul magnifies the Lord...” There is only one way. Many wrong ways, and only one right one, and that is to magnify and also to lift up the Lord (one name for the Lord in fact is the Lord Our Banner, and of course a banner is made to be seen and lifted up). God’s Word is just absolutely crystal-clear on that, including that failure to do this is what led to the rebellious angels being thrown out of Heaven. No one else but God is eternal as He is, and the source of all good, and it is what God wants us to see and then to help others to see, since in the natural man is in a lost and confused state, and that leads him to make all sorts of idols, including of himself. And the only remedy for that is the truth, and God’s faithful servants, including Mary, will, when someone wants to praise or worship them, use that occasion to point that person in the right direction, as to whom really deserves all of our praise and worship.