Mothering Sunday, Mother's Day - ancient tradition or modern invention?

A bunch of flowers with a hand-written greeting card saying ‘Happy Mother’s Day’

THE FOURTH SUNDAY in Lent has been celebrated as Mothering Sunday in the UK for many years, and some claim it has a long history in our churches. Andi from Open Table Warrington takes a closer look and argues for a more inclusive understanding of the celebration.

Mothering Sunday, commonly referred to as Mother’s Day, can be difficult for many of us. At the very least, those of us leading services today have to juggle the competing needs to celebrate motherhood in the way many have come to expect, while simultaneously recognising that the day is - for many - a painful one.

Mothering Sunday has come to commemorate a particular kind of mothering, and a largely idealised one at that. This is awkward when we now, more than ever, understand that relationships can be difficult. ‘Motherhood’ itself, and the relationships through which mothers operate, have changed. I personally know many mothers who have sole responsibility for parenting their children, and of course there are also children who have multiple mothers. This is often overlooked in the ways we usually ‘do’ Mothering Sunday.

Add to this those who have lost or never knew their mothers, have been unable to become mothers or who have lost children - it’s not difficult to see how the overly sentimental reinforcements of ‘motherhood ‘can be problematic. Being forced to ‘celebrate’ idealised motherhood only serves to heighten the pain.

When I mentioned this to an elder in my own church, he told me that ‘Mother’s Day is actually Mothering Sunday and is to do with the mother church rather than actual mothers..’ This is a commonly held view, but not one that actually holds much water. It also fails to explain satisfactorily why, all these years later, the church tends to use the day to focus on mothers without really mentioning the parent church at all.

If we are to understand what Mothering Sunday is, and decide what it should be, then it’s useful to know something about its origins.

Plenty of websites will tell you about the ‘true origins’ of Mothering Sunday. They make statements, in a very matter-of-fact way, such as: ‘Mothering Sunday was an occasion when, in the 18th and 19th centuries, domestic servants were given the day off to visit their mothers and the family home.’ Another says: ‘England’s Mother’s Day observance goes back to the 13th century when “Mothering Sunday” was observed on the fourth Sunday of Lent (because it was originally for Mary, mother of Christ).’ Another claims that ‘centuries ago it was considered important for people to return to their home or ‘mother’ church at least once a year. So each year, in the middle of Lent, everyone would visit their ‘mother’ church, or the main ‘church or cathedral of the area’.

This is all argued as if undeniable fact, but the reality is there are no sources for any of it. One would expect an 800-year old tradition to find some mention in the historical record, but there is none. Given it appears to have been such a significant occasion, one might also expect to find written evidence of it in the cultural record - for example, in the writings of Chaucer or Shakespeare, but there is simply nothing to work with there either. The idea that people would be travelling all over the country, returning to the parent church, on the same weekend every year, and for there to be absolutely no evidence for it is far-fetched. At the very least, there should be something to point to increased travelling at this time,and something in the extensive ecclesiastical records.

There is some documentary evidence of Mothering Sunday practices, but they are much later. The Cotswold Place-Lore and Customs of 1912 states: ‘Mid-Lent Sunday. In the Stroud and Minchinhampton districts, servant girls still expect to go home for Mothering Sunday.’ The Irish Monthly in 1882 referenced: ‘At Bury, a day of great feasting and rejoicing is kept in mid-Lent, and goes by the name of Mothering Sunday. The people come from far and near to visit their friends at Bury, and are entertained with Simnel Cakes and ale.’ There are two things to say about these curious reports. The first is that they clearly relate to local, rather than national practices - there is certainly nothing to evidence a more widespread custom of employers allowing servants to return to their families on a particular day (and there certainly would be had it existed). The second is they are also secular, rather than religious, observances.

So how did Mothering Sunday find itself entering our church calendar?

It seems that Mothering Sunday as we know it is actually a modern invention.

In 1913, a well connected American woman named Anna Jarvis successfully lobbied both the US Senate and the House of Representatives to legislate that the second Sunday in May should be set aside as ‘a national day of remembrance of mothers.’ There was no pretence that this was based on any traditional customs or historic practices - Miss Jarvis was inventing something new and would never claim anything other.

In the UK, an Anglican woman named Constance Smith became inspired by the American Mother’s Day. But she was also interested in historical folk customs and localised church traditions. Like Anna Jarvis, she felt the need of a day ‘in praise of mothers’. But she was uncomfortable with adopting something so American, and so sought to connect it to historical British customs. She tied localised traditions in Bury, Shropshire and Hampshire together to make the claim that Mothering Sunday was in fact a historic national festival that should be revived. She went even further, suggesting that this is confirmed in the Book of Common Prayer for the fourth Sunday of Lent. (The collect for that Sunday reads: ‘we, who for our evil deeds do worthily deserve to be punished, by the comfort of thy grace may mercifully be relieved.’ It is moderately maternal, but hardly the stuff on which to base claims of ancient religious practices.)

Smith also sought to connect Mothering Sunday to the historic Laetare Sunday, for no obvious reason other than that this too occurred on the fourth Sunday of Lent. Laetare Sunday takes its name from the Latin for ‘to rejoice’. It was a special Lenten festival in which flowers were permitted, the organ could be played at church services with rose-coloured vestments were allowed instead of purple, the traditional colour for Lent. But nowhere in the historical record is there anything to connect it to motherhood.

In 1920 Constance Smith published a booklet called The Revival of Mothering Sunday. In the immediate aftermath of World War I, a day celebrating mothers had understandable appeal. Why Constance Smith decided to recreate history to argue for it I have no idea - I can only surmise that she wished to combine her deep religiosity with a sense of British identity. Unfortunately, her false history has become accepted fact, and it has legitimised the church’s ‘ownership’ of the celebration. The best that can be said is that Constance Smith’s Mothering Sunday is a religious reinvention of secular, localised practices.

There’s also the view that the Mothering Sunday customs Smith described are themselves a Christian appropriation of older, Roman practices honouring Mother Earth - but that claim only holds weight if Smith’s historical ‘facts’ are correct in the first instance. The inescapable reality is that there is zero evidence for a nearly 2,000-year=old continuing tradition.

I am uncomfortable with how this day has become such a key date in the church calendar, in a way that Father’s Day (for example) has not -and in a way in which Mother’s Day is not in the USA. I find it regrettable that Constance Smith, in advocating for something quite sensible, opted to do it in such a disingenuous way, and make historically inaccurate claims for its religious heritage. Mothering Sunday is not, historically speaking, a religious festival, and neither should it be. It has absolutely nothing to do with the ‘mother’ church, and so we should focusnon remembering and celebrating mothers - after all, honouring and blessing all kinds of mothers is a great thing to do.

But let’s also give some thought to how we do it, embracing all mothers (including those in same-sex partnerships; it can be excruciating to witness a so-called ‘inclusive church’ reiterating a dated heteronormative view of motherhood that fails to accept diversity in relationships) and demonstrating an understanding that for a lot of us Mother’s Day is a difficult time.

Mothering Sunday/Mother’s Day can, and should be, many things – but one thing it should not be is dishonest. It needs to reimagine motherhood, understand that many of us are (and have) mothers in the non-biological sense, honour foster parents, affirm unconventional relationships, celebrate same-sex parents, and - sadly - recognise that not all experiences of mothering are positive. If we can do that, then Mothering Sunday becomes a dynamic means of embracing people where they are, rather than a sentimental celebration of unrealistic expectations.

Mothering Sunday’s strength must be in its ability to look forward – not stay rooted in the (mythical) past.

Adapted with permission from a March 2019 article on honesttogodweb.wordpress.com