It's American Mothers Day and UK Mothering Sunday
# I've just been told that US MD is not until May - I can't keep up with all these Mothers Days in the year. Today is Mothering Sunday though here.
Mothering Sunday and Mother's Day both have different origins; although they represent the same meaning, they originated very differently. ... Mothering Sunday has been celebrated on the fourth Sunday in Lent, in the UK and Ireland, since the 16th century. The date varies in other parts of the world.
Some US churches run with it, others do not.
It was traditionally a day off for servants, who could use it to return home and visit their mothers, since they wouldn't get to see them during the rest of the year, on average.
As for the commercial Mothers Day:
The creation of a national Mother's Day is primarily attributed to three women: Ann Reeves Jarvis, Julia Ward Howe, and Ann's daughter, Anna M. Jarvis.
Why so many Mothers Days throughout the year?
Countries which celebrate Mother's Day on the second Sunday of May include Australia, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Switzerland, Turkey and Belgium.
We've just had International Feminist/Communist Women's Day on March 8th.
I was taught many years ago that Mothering Sunday had nothing to do with mothers, but was the Sunday when everyone returned to celebrate in their Mother Church.
ReplyDeleteThat's it.
DeleteCorrect. The 'mother church' being, of course, the church in their birth Parish. It was a Catholic Feast Day. But that went the way of most things Catholic when Henry the 8th went on the rampage, destroying wholesale the traditions of England. That gave rise to the phrase, "the dark ages": that is, everything about English village and town life before Henry, which became unknown, forgotten, forbidden to know or celebrate or even to remember out loud after half a generation.
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