Hello Readers,
Mothering Sunday is not a fixed day because it is always the middle Sunday in Lent, which lasts from Ash Wednesday to the day before Easter Sunday. This means Mothering Sunday falls will fall on different dates each year. Mothering Sunday has been celebrated in the UK on the fourth Sunday in Lent since at least the 16th Century.
Mothering Sunday has also been known as ‘Refreshment Sunday’, ‘Pudding Pie Sunday’, and ‘Mid Lent Sunday’. It was a day in Lent when fasting rules were relaxed in honour of the ‘Feeding of the Five Thousand’, a story in the Christian Bible.
No one is absolutely certain exactly how the name ‘Mothering Sunday’ began but one theory is that the celebration could have been adopted from a Roman Spring Festival celebrating Cybele, their Mother Goddess.
As Christianity spread, people made a point of visiting their nearest big church, the Mother Church, the church where everyone was baptised. Cathedrals are the Mother Church of all other churches in the area. People who visited their church would say they had gone ‘a mothering’.
Years ago, maids and servants who worked in service to the wealthy were only allowed one day off a year to visit their family each year and this was usually on Mothering Sunday. For some, this would have been a most significant journey since their mothers may have lived some considerable distance away or indeed another town altogether from the Manor or Mansion where they were employed. Often the cook or housekeeper would allow the maids to bake a cake to take home to their mothers. Sometimes a gift of eggs or flowers from the hothouse would be allowed.
Mothering Sunday is also sometimes known as ‘Simnel Sunday’ because of the tradition of baking Simnel Cakes. It was not eaten on Mothering Sunday because of the rules of Lent. Instead it was eaten at Easter.
Mothering Sunday falls on March 30th this year and my family and I will be celebrating a very special time together because not only am I a mother, but so is my darling daughter, Katie, mummy to her son’s Ben and Finlay.
Not everyone has children of their own but are spiritual mothers to other family members, close friends or their pets. Not everyone’s mother’s are alive today and very sadly missed by their loved ones but honoured and remembered in their hearts each and every day.
Whoever you are, wherever you may be, my family, The Lulas and I would like to wish you all a very happy Mothering Sunday.
‘No painters brush,
nor poets pen,
In justice to her fame,
has ever reached high enough,
To write a Mother’s name’
A Mother’s arms are more comforting than anyone else’s and no matter how old a Mother is, she still watches her middle aged children for signs of improvement.
Until Next Week,
Love and Light,
Linda and The Lulasxx
