Each year on the fourth Sunday of Lent, countries around the world celebrate Mothering Sunday. This typically involves lavishing Mums with gifts and attention and celebrating the women who have nurtured us throughout our lives.
Last Sunday, March 19, 2023, mothers were up and down being celebrated on Mother’s Day, churches around the country will be sharing their own traditions, celebrating and giving thanks to the huge impact mothers have on each of our lives.
The main service on Mothering Sunday in churches across the country is central to the life of the church.
The church recognises that the day may be difficult for some people and so it is common place for services to include prayers for those who don’t find the day particularly easy.
Families across the country will be preparing little presents and cards and in some churches flowers are blessed and handed out during the main service.
Families came together to have lunch, or children make breakfast in bed for their mothers, leaving all the mess to be cleared up later! It’s all about showing appreciation and many make a huge effort to make their mother feel special.
Years ago, a wise soul wrote that perhaps the greatest value of storytelling is its ability to help us become better people.
More empathetic. More thoughtful. More understanding that others have successfully traveled along harrowing paths with courage, dignity and hope.
After all, was the original intent of the founders of what was designated a national holiday in 1914.
No, many of us won’t be able to celebrate it as we have in the past, showering our mothers with gifts, flowers and taking them out for brunch. It’s a sad reminder of the need for sheltering-in-place.
But, as all mothers know instinctively, keeping their children safe is job one, the highest priority. And, conversely, keeping our mothers safe is our top priority.
So we won’t spend the estimated $25 billion nationally this year on cards, flowers, gifts and special outings that we have in the past. And we won’t be dine at a favorite restaurant on what for years has been the nation’s most popular day for eating out.
That’s unfortunate because florists, restaurants and jewelers could use the business.
But that shouldn’t stop you from telling your mother how much you appreciate her.
Express your love for her and maybe, just maybe, you’ll relieve some of her anxieties created by this crisis.
In the process, you’ll be honoring Anna Jarvis, a copywriter who never married and never had children, but is widely regarded as the “mother” of Mother’s Day.
As her story goes, in 1876, Jarvis was inspired by her own mother’s prayer at the close of a Sunday school class: “I hope and pray that someone, sometime, will found a memorial mother’s day commemorating her for the matchless service she renders to humanity in every field of life.”
The notion of a gift-centric holiday was hardly the goal. Anna’s mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, would have scoffed at the the idea of a day when no work would be done.
Rather, she sought a day when people would join mothers in performing community service, focusing on the causes that would improve the lives of women and their families.
She recognized the dangers that diseases and poor living conditions had on mothers and their children.
Anna Jarvis took the idea and ran with it. But she wasn’t the only woman seeking to create a special day for causes important to mothers.
Julia Ward Howe, who wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” began pushing for a “Mothers Peace Day” in 1873. She saw it as a way to promote global unity after the horrors of the Civil War.
And there was school principal Mary Towels Sasseen, who in 1887 began encouraging schools to organize tributes to mothers through books, songs and readings.
The movement slowly grew throughout the United States until President Woodrow Wilson designated the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day.
Anna Jarvis later became appalled at the commercialization of the day and eventually went broke filing numerous lawsuits against what she labeled “the hordes of money schemers” seeking to profit from Mother’s Day.
We’re not suggesting that people avoid sending their mothers a meaningful gift.
But we do encourage everyone to take the opportunity during the pandemic to be creative and think of innovative ways to honor mothers everywhere.
In the process be more empathetic. More thoughtful. And more understanding that, as unlikely as it may seem now, by coming together in this time of crisis we could emerge, one day, the better for it.
