Mothering Sunday is not on a fixed day each year, but falls on the middle Sunday of Lent, lasting from Ash Wednesday to the day before Easter Sunday. In 2014 it occurs on 30th March. In earlier times the day was referred to as Mid-Lent Sunday (a day in Lent when the fasting rules were relaxed) in honour of feeding the five thousand (a story from the Bible). It has also been called Refreshment Sunday and Pudding Pie Sunday.
The day does have close connection to food and family, going back some time young girls and boys worked in service in big manors or mansion houses. They would only get one day off a year, and they often used this to travel home (in some cases hundreds of miles) to see their Mothers. The cook of the household would let the maids bake a cake to take home – the most favoured cake was Simnel:
‘I’ll to thee a Simnel bring
Gainst thou go’st mothering
So that, when she blesseth thee
Half that blessing thou’lt give to me.’
Simnel cake is still popular, although is now more commonly eaten as an Easter treat.
For Christians the epistle in the Book of Common Prayer for this Sunday refers to heavenly Jerusalem as ‘the mother of us all’. For over 400 years, people have made a point of visiting their nearest biggest church (the Mother church), or the church in which they were baptised.
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