Mother’s Day is the contemporary version of the original name – ‘Mothering Sunday’. The occasion has a long history, which dates to as far back as the 1600′s. During that time, the poor used to send their children to work as domestic servants or trainees in the homes of the higher classes. Once a year, these children were given leave for a day, so that they could visit their Mother Church as well as their own mother.

Mothering Sunday is not a fixed day because it is always the middle Sunday in Lent (which lasts from Ash Wednesday to the day before Easter Sunday). This means that Mother’s Day in the UK will fall on different dates each year and sometimes even fall in different months. 

Mothering Sunday was also known as ‘Refreshment Sunday’, Pudding Pie Sunday (mmm like the sound of that!) or ‘Mid-Lent Sunday’. It was a day in Lent when the fasting rules were relaxed, in honour of the ‘Feeding of the Five Thousand’, a story in the Christian Bible.

Did you know?
Mothering Sunday is also sometimes know as Simnel Sunday because of the tradition of baking Simnel cakes. The Simnel cake is a fruit cake. A flat layer of marzipan is placed on top of the cake and is decorated with 11 marzipan balls representing the 12 apostles minus Judas, who betrayed Christ.

It was not eaten on Mothering Sunday because of the rules of Lent, instead it was saved until Easter. The word simnel probably derived from the latin word ‘simila’, meaning fine, wheaten flour from which the cakes were made.