Sunday March 2nd. 2008   Mothering Sunday

Mothering Sunday

No one is absolutely certain  how the idea of Mothering Sunday began, but we know that, about four hundred years ago, on the Fourth Sunday of Lent, known as Laetare Sunday – Rejoicing Sunday, people who lived in little villages made a point of going, not to their local church, but to the nearest big church. To what was called the Mother Church. And some would go to the nearest city to worship in the cathedral for the cathedral is the mother church of all other churches in the diocese.

People who visited their mother church would say they had gone "a mothering." Young English girls and boys “in service” were only allowed one day or two days to visit their family each year. This was usually Mothering Sunday. Often the housekeeper or cook would allow the maids to bake a cake to take home for their mother. Sometimes a gift of eggs; or flowers from the garden or hothouse was allowed. Flowers were traditional, as the young girls and boys would have to walk home to their village, and could gather them on their way home through the meadows