If I asked what you knew about celebrating the fourth Sunday in Lent you may be puzzled, but tell you it’s Mothering Sunday and who hasn’t heard of it?
Next to Christmas and Easter it has become one of the greatest commercial events in our calendar but the history of this special day is often lost as people scramble for cards, flowers and table reservations.
The commercialism upsets many but the tradition of putting aside a special day for mothers is one dear to hearts not just in this country but all over the world.
This year Mother’s Day falls on March 14th. In our millions we will buy cards, flowers, gifts and restaurants will be teeming with families making just one day special for the person who makes every day special for them.
Every Mum is special. You only have one, go on spoil her. She is usually the woman in your life who asks so little and gives so much so it is fitting that at a time of year when Spring is hopefully in the air we mark that specialness.
It doesn’t have to be madly expensive, simply something to mark your affection. I well remember spending my mother’s last Mother’s Day in a fish and chip restaurant overlooking a waterway. So peaceful, tranquil, and in the heart of the Yorkshire she loved. Neither of us knew it was to be the last one. Seize the day, enjoy it.
Mothering Sunday in the UK is the equivalent of Mother’s Day in other countries, but the two tend to have merged into one universally celebrated event.
Mothering Sunday was also known as ‘Refreshment Sunday’, ‘Pudding Pie Sunday’ (in Surrey) or ‘Mid-Lent Sunday’. It was a day in Lent when the fasting rules were relaxed, in honour of the ‘Feeding of the Five Thousand’, a story in the Christian Bible.
The more usual name was Mothering Sunday. No one is absolutely certain exactly how the name of Mothering Sunday began. However, one theory is that the celebration could have been adopted from a Roman spring festival celebrating Cybele, their Mother Goddess.
As Christianity spread, this date was adopted by Christians. The epistle in the Book of Common Prayer for this Sunday refers to the heavenly Jerusalem as “the Mother of us all”, and this may have prompted the customs we still see today.
It is known that on this date, about 400 years ago, people made a point of visiting their nearest big church (the Mother Church). The church in which each person was baptised. Cathedrals are the ‘mother church’ of all other churches in a diocese.
If you want to be a little different this year how about a spot of baking?
Did you know that Mothering Sunday used to be widely known as Simnel Sunday? It was traditional to make a Simnel cake, which is a fruit cake topped off with 11 marzipan balls to represent the Apostles minus Judas who betrayed Jesus.
It was not eaten on Mothering Sunday, because of the rules of Lent, but saved until Easter.
A poem from the times of the origin of Mother’s Day goes:
“I’ll to thee a Simnell bring
‘Gainst thou go’st a mothering,
So that, when she blesseth thee,
Half that blessing thou’lt give to me
So there’s a plan for you. Bake a cake and you’ll get half of it back. Well, your Mum would do that wouldn’t she?
Graham Smith for Third Age.
Written by Editor.
