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.
As the social historian Ronald Hutton points out, the first evidence for this is a poem by Robert Herrick on ‘A ceremony in Gloucester’: ‘I’ll to thee a simnel bring/ gainst thou go a mothering’, a simnel being a cake made with fine flour. So there you go: for the authentic Mother’s Day present, get a simnel cake.
As usual, it was the Americans who took Mother’s Day to a whole new level. A redoubtable lady, Anna Jarvis of Philadelphia, inspired by her own mother, proposed in 1908 that the mothers of America should have their own special day, and in 1914, Congress voted to devote the second Sunday of May to mothers – it being a tough call then as now to vote against them.
Alas, Miss Jarvis was to repent of her work when she saw the way the day was ruthlessly commercialised, including the white carnations with which she marked it.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in