Fireside Reflections 14th March 2010

Fireside Reflections

The LORD be with you…And also with you. Jack writes: Good morning! Once again as I write the snow is rapidly retreating, the sun is gaining warmth and the green shoots that announce the coming daffodils to the world have emerged. Is Spring in the air this time? I hope so. We are moving through the season of Lent and focusing upon the journey of Jesus to the cross.

Yet on this Sunday the calendar also holds another occasion: Mother’s Day. Actually its real title in this country is Mothering Sunday. Mother’s Day is a secular occasion in many countries celebrated in May. In USA, for example, it is a national holiday that resulted from the campaign by Anna Jarvis. Her mother had been a prominent social activist during the American Civil War. On May 12, 1907, two years after her mother's death, Anna held a memorial to her mother and thereafter embarked upon a campaign to make "Mother's Day" a recognized holiday. She succeeded in making this nationally recognized in 1914. It was deliberately called ‘Mother’s Day’ rather than ‘Mothers’ Day’ to ensure that not some general idea of motherhood was honoured but each person’s individual mother.

However, it wasn’t long before the commercialism that becomes associated with these special days disillusioned Anna. She said: A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world. And candy! You take a box to Mother—and then eat most of it yourself. A petty sentiment!  She spent the rest of her life campaigning against the very holiday she worked so hard to create.

Most of the world have followed the USA on holding this commemoration on ‘the second Sunday in May’ (a phrase that was trademarked by Anna Jarvis) but not all countries. Mother’s Day is actually spread throughout over most of the calendar when all countries are considered. But in our country it is not Mother’s Day but Mothering Sunday.

There was in the ancient world religious festivals that celebrated motherhood. In the Roman religion the festival was in honour of the mother goddess Cybele and it took place during mid-March. When the Roman Empire converted to Christianity these old pagan acts were remembered as part of cultural folklore, and the Church did what it always did to try and wean the populace away from such practises; it overlaid the existing festival with Christian meaning.

For Christianity that meant focusing upon two thing: Mary, the mother of Jesus and the Church, known to all Christians as mother Church. The season of Lent had its six Sundays and the fourth was known as Laetare Sunday. This comes from the Latin for ‘rejoice’. In the middle of Lent it was felt the worshippers needed a break from the weeks of fasting and penitential behaviour; they needed a sign of hope that joy was on its way.

This Sunday also had an association with flowers, especially roses. In the Middle Ages an ornament of a golden rose was created and on this Sunday the pope would bless it and send it to Catholic monarchs. One pope, Innocent III said: "As Lætare Sunday, the day set apart for the function, represents love after hate, joy after sorrow, and fullness after hunger, so does the rose designate by its colour, odour and taste, love, joy and satiety respectively."

March 25 is the day set apart to remember the Annunciation. Nine month before the date of Christmas, it is on this day the angel Gabriel told Mary she would conceive and bear a son. She then sings forth her praise in joy to God in a song.

So the Church remembered Mary and also Mother Church. Congregations in England would create a circle around their church on this day to ‘embrace it. The joy of the occasion was then the inspiration to allow servants the chance to go home to their mother church and their own mothers. The joy also allowed the custom of baking cakes to take home, and the giving of posies that are part of this nation’s cultural heritage of Mothering Sunday, now mixed in with the secular commercialism of Mother’s Day, that so irritated Anna Jarvis.

So to mothers everywhere, including my own: Happy Mothering Sunday!

Until next week…The Lord Bless You and Keep You.