How Mother’s Day became big business

As ever, the Romans got there first. Their version of Mothering Sunday or Mother’s Day was the feast of Juno Lucina, the patroness of childbirth, which happened on the first day of the year, 1 March. Roman mothers wore their hair down and their tunics loose. Their husbands and daughters gave them gifts. It was also one of the few days when slaves got time off and were, for once, waited on. Obvious parallels, then.

Fast forward 1,500 years, and Mothering Sunday is a thing, but the origins aren’t entirely clear. Was it connected with the medieval custom whereby parish churches sent parishioners to their mother church or cathedral? Maybe: certainly by the 17th century the fourth Sunday in Lent (when the reading in church was ‘Jerusalem Mater Omnium’ – Jerusalem, mother of all) was when servant girls would return to their homes and their mother church and visit their own mothers.