Mothering Sunday (Mother's Day).
Dates 18th March 2012, 10th March 2013.
Today Mother’s Day is celebrated worldwide to honor mothers and motherhood with gifts like flowers and cards being given. Mother’s Day (Mothering Sunday) in the UK is believed to have originated in the 16th century. England celebrated Mothering Sunday on the fourth Sunday of Lent as a way to honor the mothers of England. Many worked as servants for the wealthy so on Mothering Sunday, servants were given the day off to return home and spend the day with their mothers. The Christian practice of visiting one's mother church annually on Laetere Sunday meant that most mothers would be reunited with their children on this day due to those working in service being given the day off.
The earliest Mother's Day celebrations though go back centuries to the spring celebrations of ancient Greece in honor of Rhea, the Mother of the Gods where people would make offerings of honey-cakes, drinks, and flowers at dawn and the Romans also had a mother of all gods, Magna Mater, or Great Mother. A temple was built in Rome for her and in March of each year, there was a 3 day celebration in her honor called the Festival of Hilaria. Gifts were brought to the temple to
please the mother goddess.
By the 1950s it had become very popular in the UK, thanks to the marketing efforts of companies who saw a great commercial opportunity and today in the US according to the National Restaurant Association, Mother's Day is the most popular day of the year to dine out at a restaurant and is the 3rd most popular date for sending cards with Mother's Day (141 million), Valentine's Day (152 million), and Christmas (1.8 billion).
Mothers
Day in its current form can be traced back to America where Anna Marie Jarvis
sought to dedicate an annual church service in the memory of her dead mother.
She subsequently worked to get the day recognised throughout the USA and in May
1914 President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the day a national bank holiday.
Unfortunately very quickly the day became commercialised and she died bitter
and disillusioned by the holiday date she had campaigned to create. Before her
death she was reported to have said
"A printed card means nothing except
that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more foryou than anyone in the world. And candy! You take a box to Mother and then eat
most of it yourself. A pretty sentiment." | 
mothers day
