MOTHER’S DAY
As flower stalls prepare to be besieged by bouquet-hunters, Julian Humphrys looks at the origins of Mother’s Day
Mother’s Day or Mothering Sunday?
Originally they were two distinct festivals. Today (with the exception of the dates on which they are held), they are to most people all but indistinguishable. But the origins of Mother’s Day are American and secular, while those of Mothering Sunday are British and religious.
How old is Mother’s Day?
Just over a century. In 1914, US president Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the second Sunday in May as a day for the “public expression of love and reverence for the mothers of our country”.
Although It was partly the brainchild of West Virginian Anna Jarvis, who successfully campaigned for a day when children could express their love and gratitude to their mothers, it was an idea that had previously been suggested by both her own mother and the poet, and social activist, Julia Ward Howe. In the 1870s, Howe advocated a day in June when mothers could promote the cause of peace.
How does Mothering Sunday differ?
Britain’s Mothering Sunday takes place on the fourth Sunday in Lent. In pre-Reformation times, people would visit their ‘mother church’ on that day and, later, servants might be given the day off to visit their mothers and families.
Its revival was largely due to Constance Penswick-Smith, a Buckinghamshire vicar’s daughter who, inspired by Jarvis, founded the Mothering Sunday Movement in 1914. She was keen to revive the Christian symbolism of the day and saw it as something both Anglicans and non-Anglicans could enjoy and support. Launched as it was during the Great War, a time of separation and loss, it struck a chord and its popularity rapidly spread.
What would Jarvis have thought of today’s Mother’s Day?
She would have hated it. Indeed, during her later years she mounted a relentless but doomed campaign against what she saw as the shameful commercialisation of her special day. Printed cards were a particular bugbear of hers – she saw them as a poor excuse for the letter that children were too lazy to write. But her railing was to no avail… we now buy and send tens of millions of Mother’s Day cards every year.