Mother's Day Tradition
Mother’s Day is a recently created occasion to celebrate and appreciate mothers and maternal love, now celebrated on various days in many places around the world. It is to be assumed that Mother’s Day is a renaming of Mothering Sunday, which was a British tradition.
MOTHERING SUNDAY
Mothering Sunday itself did not begin as a celebration of motherhood in fact. During the sixteenth century, people returned to their ‘mother church’ for a service to be held on the fourth Sunday of Lent. This was either a large local church, or more often the nearest Cathedral. Anyone who did this was commonly said to have gone “a-mothering”, although whether this preceded the term Mothering Sunday is unclear.
It was often the only time that whole families could gather together, if prevented by conflicting working hours. This is thought to have led to the practice of releasing apprentices and servants on this day in order to visit their families, and became known as Mothering Sunday
It is now principally a day used to show appreciation to one’s mother, although it is still recognised in the historical sense by some churches.
WHEN IS MOTHER’S DAY?
In Ireland and the UK, Mother’s Day is celebrated on the Fourth Sunday of Lent because of the tradition of Mothering Sunday.
This year it is the 22nd of March
In the USA and now the majority of other countries it is celebrated on the Second Sunday of May.
This is principally due to the influence of an American woman called Ann Jarvis. She was a social activist who organised women during the American Civil War to work for better sanitary conditions for both sides. When she died in 1905, her daughter started a crusade to found a memorial day for women that would be celebrated as a church service.
FLOWERS ASSOCIATED WITH MOTHER’S DAY
Roses
Roses are traditionally associated with Mother’s Day in Ireland and the UK, and this is thought to relate to Rose Sunday which was sometimes used in the Church as an alternative title for Mothering Sunday.
This title may refer to the tradition of posies of flowers being collected and distributed at the service originally to all the mothers, but latterly to all women in the congregation.
Or alternatively, the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia asserts that the ‘Golden Rose’, sent by the Popes to Catholic sovereigns, used to be blessed at this time, and for this reason the day was sometimes called ‘Dominica de Rosa’ or ‘Rose Sunday’
Carnations
The first Mother’s Day service in the USA was held on 10 May 1908, and white carnations were given out to all the women in the congregation as a symbol of the purity of a mother’s love.
As a result of this, carnations have come to represent Mother’s Day in the USA, where it became the custom to wear one on Mother’s Day.
Partly due to the shortage of white carnations, florists promoted the idea of wearing a red carnation if your mother was living, and a white carnation is your mother was dead. This has now made its way into popular observation at churches.
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