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Primroses for Mother's Day? Photo by ndrwfgg - CC-BY

Once UK shops have cleared out their Valentines, they stock up with Mother’s Day cards. In amongst them will be a few that wish you a Happy Mothering Sunday. It’s the Sunday about half way between Pancake Day (Mardi Gras) and Easter, and has been a day for recognising English mothers for several centuries.

If you like to keep up old traditions, you’ll take a posy of violets or primroses and a simnel cake (with saffron and dried fruit) when you go to see your mum. You may also have saved up for a small “trinket”. Her contribution would once have been a bowl of frumenty (boiled wheat in milk and sugar) and a glass of bragget (spiced, sweetened ale)  – and her blessing upon you. Some households would eat roast veal if they could afford it, and there were regional specialities in some places, like fig-cakes or mothering buns.

Because the day is fixed in the church calendar for the fourth Sunday of Lent, it used also to be called Mid-Lent day. This was a time to relax the usual strict rules for this time of year – plain food only for six weeks before Easter – and have a festive family gathering, maybe a big occasion with grandchildren and grandmothers. Young servants and apprentices were given the day off to go “a-mothering”, and sometimes their employers provided a mothering cake for them to take home.

An even earlier tradition was for people to go on a visit to their area’s mother church on this day. And before that, the Romans had a spring festival (Hilaria) for the mother goddess Cybele. This time of year does seem to call for something. Perhaps keeping to simple meals for the long run-up to Easter was easier with a short break for “mid-lenting”?

It’s generally assumed that the name Mother’s Day has more or less replaced Mothering Sunday because of certain 20th century trends in UK culture – decreasing interest in church-related customs, a tendency to adopt American phrases, and businesses inspired by US ideas.

A different perspective comes from Iona and Peter Opie, the experts on childhood traditions, who say Mothering Sunday was in serious decline by the early 20th century. Going mothering had already died out in some regions in the 19th century, and Victorian writers on folklore discuss it as an old custom that their readers won’t necessarily know. Writing in the 1950s, the Opies suggest the tradition was revived, and commercialised, after American servicemen based in wartime and post-war Britain “reminded” people by talking about their own Mother’s Day.

Other names for this day include Refreshment Sunday, Braggot  Sunday, Simnel Sunday, Laetare Sunday and Rose Sunday.

This year, 2009, it’s on March 22nd.