Mother's Day: US vs UK

By Alectra Rose 

In the United States, we celebrate Mother's Day on May 12th this year. In the United Kingdom, they celebrate Mother’s Day on March 24th this year. In the UK, Mother’s Day is celebrated on the Fourth Sunday in March; in the US, Mother’s Day falls on the second Sunday of May. Not only is it celebrated on a different day but they also call it something different, Mother's Sunday. 

In the UK, they have the Christian festival of Lent which leads to the custom when those who had moved away for work would come back and visit their 'mother church' and their mothers on that Sunday, which is why it is called Mothering Sunday.

The UK Mother’s Sunday goes back to the Middle Ages. Traditionally, it was a day when children, mainly daughters, who had gone to work as domestic servants were given a day off to visit their mother and family. Now it is a day when children get to give their mothers presents, flowers, and homemade cards. 

Centuries ago it was considered important for people to return to their home or 'mother' church once a year. So each year in the middle of Lent, everyone would visit their 'mother' church. Inevitably the return to the 'mother' church became an occasion for family reunions when children working away returned home. 

Most historians think that the return to the 'Mother' church led to the tradition of children, particularly those working as domestic servants or apprentices, being given the day off to visit their mother and family. As they walked along the country lanes, children would pick wild flowers or violets to take to church or give to their mother as a small gift.

Mothering Sunday was also known as Refreshment Sunday because the fasting rules for Lent were relaxed that day. Originally, both Old and New Testament lessons on mid-lent Sunday made a point of foods. It was said that “the New Testament told the story of how Jesus fed five thousand people with only five small barley loaves and two small fish.” 

So the UK often makes a special cake on Mother’s Sunday known as the Simnel cake. The Simnel cake is a cake that was originally made for Mother’s Sunday. It is a fruit cake with two layers of almond paste, one on top and one in the middle. On top of the cake are 11 balls of marzipan icing made to represent the 11 disciples recognized by the tradition.

          For the U.S. we celebrate Mother’s Day in May because in 1908 Anna Jarvis started a dedicated letter-writing campaign to get an official Mother’s Day once her mother Ann Marie died, May 9th, 1905.

A few years later in 1914 “President Woodrow Wilson declared Mother's Day a national holiday, with the date falling on the second Sunday in May.” https://www.countryliving.com/life/a26105202/when-is-mothers-day/

Anna ended up not likely the idea of “Mother's Day became commercialized by florists, greeting card vendors, and candy companies—or, as Anna preferred to call them, "schemers" and "profiteers." 

Despite her efforts to try and recapture the true meaning of Mother's Day, the day was completely changed from giving back to charity to giving gifts instead. "Anna told me, with terrible bitterness, that she was sorry she ever started Mother’s Day," according to a reporter for BuzzFeed. 

        In the U.S. instead of baking a cake for our mothers, most cook breakfast for their moms, buy them flowers, and shower them with small surprises. Each year Americans send over 133 million cards to their mothers just for Mother's Day alone!