10 March 2016
Mother’s Day or Mothering Sunday, “Bah Humbug!”
Why the modern celebration is a fabrication and a guilt trip.
by Lynda Goetz
“Mother’s Day is really just a test of your other half’s gift-giving skills,” pronounced Bryony Gordon in The Sunday Telegraph’s Stella Magazine. What?! (I think I might just be allowed to use that exclamation mark under the Government’s new guidelines for punctuation for primary school children; but I’ll save the rant on Government interference in English grammar for another time.) I am in fact taking Bryony’s comments somewhat out of context here, for this is far from her overall take on the occasion, but the comment does reflect, it would seem, the latest approach to Mother’s Day. The idea of it as a vicarious Valentine’s Day was not one I had come across, but it seems I am rather behind the times and that in its latest guise, Mothering Sunday may indeed have become just another way of guilt-tripping your other half, or possibly of shaming your children.
I first became aware of this new take on an old idea when my thirty-year old son described the trouble a friend of his had got into by not making a special fuss of his wife, a new mother of a baby a few months old, on Mother’s Day. It seems the poor lad was treated to a complete tantrum from the lady, who, as a mother for the first time on Mother’s Day apparently expected ‘the full works’ arranged on behalf of the infant by her husband. The fact that he had singularly failed to live up to expectations was regarded as a complete derogation of duty. My son was appalled, as was I. Surely, we both agreed, Mother’s Day is an occasion on which children (young or old) show their appreciation of their mother. It therefore goes without saying that one has to be old enough to understand appreciation, which of course a small baby clearly cannot do. Does it therefore fall to the new father to do this on the child’s behalf? Surely not. He appreciates his wife/partner/girlfriend as his romantic other half and whilst he may also appreciate, or even admire, the way she has taken to her new role as mother to his child it cannot be his responsibility to be the baby’s proxy for ‘The Day’. I do understand that a lot of us give birthday and Christmas gifts on behalf of our children. Some even do so on behalf of pets. Most of this is done light-heartedly, although there is some argument for the point of view that even this is pandering to the excessive gift-giving which seems to have become so prevalent in our affluent society. Should it also happen on Mother’s Day?
The historical origins of Mother’s Day or Mothering Sunday are a little muddled. The former, as celebrated on the second Sunday in May in the United States, dates back only to the beginning of the twentieth century and has nothing to do with the many celebrations of mothers and motherhood which have occurred all over the world for thousands of years. The latter is the fourth Sunday in Lent and was traditionally the day on which Christians returned to their ‘mother church’ (the main church or cathedral of the area) for a service to be held on Laetere Sunday. This tradition apparently dates back to the sixteenth century and those who did so were said to have gone ‘a-mothering’. In later centuries Mothering Sunday became a day on which those in domestic service were given the day off to visit their local church. As household servants were generally expected to work on most other holidays, this was often the only day on which some families could get together. This was probably the point at which, historically, the mother church and the mother of the family became somewhat muddled. It became customary for the youths and children to pick wild flowers on their route home to put in the church or to give to their mothers. This has evolved into the gift-giving we know today.
By the 1920s the tradition of keeping Mothering Sunday had lapsed somewhat and it was revived by Constance Penswick Smith (1878-1938), inspired by Anna Jarvis (1864-1948) in the United States who had, in 1914, achieved her aim of creating a national Mother’s Day when President Woodrow Wilson declared a national holiday to honour mothers. The influence of American and Canadian soldiers in the UK during World War II ensured the survival of the Mothering Sunday traditions (still celebrated in this country on the fourth Sunday in Lent rather than the second Sunday in May) and by the 1950s it had achieved not only wide recognition, but also commercial exploitation as retailers recognised the potential in it for themselves.
This element of commercialism was deplored by Jarvis herself as early as the 1920s. She not only spoke out against it, but even boycotted the day and organised protests! She felt that the day should be not about profit, but sentiment, and that commercially-made cards were totally against the spirit of the occasion. (I have no idea what she would have made of postings on Facebook!) Constance Smith may not have gone this far, but since her motivations were largely Christian in origin one can probably safely assume that she felt much the same way. Interestingly neither Jarvis nor Smith became mothers themselves.
I personally have tended to follow the views of my own mother, who was very sadly missed this Mother’s Day. She firmly maintained that whilst it was lovely to receive a card or flowers on ‘the Day’, she did not set rigorous store by it and felt that it was far more important to her to have spontaneous expressions of her children’s’ love and appreciation; that she preferred us to remember on a more regular basis to acknowledge and recognise what she did for us. Although, as she also pointed out, it was in the nature of motherhood to do all that you could for your children – with or without the recognition! One has to admire both Jarvis and Smith for understanding that, without ever stepping into the role themselves. For so many of us I suspect, it is not until we become mothers ourselves do we really realise just how much most mothers give, not materially, but emotionally. So can all that giving be acknowledged simply with a gift on one day of the year? The answer is clearly ‘No’, but from a small child a homemade gift or card is lovely and later any spontaneous expressions of appreciation are wonderful. I certainly do not think one’s ‘other half’ should ever have to attempt to put themselves ‘in loco pueris’. That is not their role. As for the commercialisation, we can take it or leave it. That is our choice; as is the choice to keep our own and our children’s effusive expressions of appreciation private or to publish them on Facebook for all to see – and envy?
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