Mothering Sunday or Mother’s Day?
Is Mothering Sunday/Mothers Day just another way of emotionally blackmailing us into spending money? No more a homemade card and wild flowers picked as we go for a walk or snowdrops and daffodils from the garden.
Presents with Mother or Mummy printed on and a fancy bag to put it in with the onus on Dad to get it right.
Of course the next worry is when parents have split up – who takes the responsibility ,the estranged father or perhaps the stepfather. Where do the children spend their day?
The days when the young people in service in the richer households were allowed to return home for the day taking the simnel cake are history now.
The original Mothering Sunday was a Christian festival when people returned to their mother church, where they were brought up and baptized and this is probably why the custom continued for the domestic servants.
Should we worry that the custom has evolved to the more modern habits of commercialism as with Christmas or accept that things change?
But where does it end?