Mothering Sunday is known for children giving presents, flowers and cards to their Mother to show how much their loved.
It is always held on the fourth Sunday of Lent.
Traditionally, Mothering Sunday was the occasion when English children who had gone to work as apprentices and domestic servants were given a day off to visit their Mothers and families.
Mothering Sunday and Mother’s Day were two distinct festivals with entirely different beginnings.
Mothering Sunday originated in seventeenth-century British culture; Mother’s Day was an American innovation in1913.
So how did Mothering Sunday became confused with Mother’s Day?
People would return to their home or “mother” church at least once a year. It was quite normal for children to leave home for work once they reached ten years of age.
As they walked back home along the country lanes on Mothering Sunday, children would pick wild flowers or primroses to take to church or give to their Mothers.
Often they brought a gift with them, a “mothering cake” a kind of fruitcake with two layers of marzipan, known as simnel cake.
At the start of the twentieth century in the United States a new festival to honour Mothers emerged.
Mother’s Day was introduced by Anna Jarvis, a young woman whose mother died in May 1906. A year later, Anna told a friend that she wished the day could be set aside to pay tribute to all mothers.
The idea spread and the governor of Anna’s state, Pennsylvania proclaimed the second Sunday in May to be Mother’s Day.
Nearly thirty years later in December 1941 the United States entered the war, servicemen began to arrive in East Anglia in large numbers.
Away from their families, these young men were surprised to find the English did not have a Mother’s Day.
British sons and daughters caught on to the idea and after the Americans had returned home at the end of the war, they continued the practice, reverting back to marking it on the fourth Sunday in Lent.
Wherever you are this year, show your Mother some love and Happy Mother’s Day to all you Mothers out there.
Written by Thereza
