Let Your Light Shine ~ learning to care and to lead for today and tomorrow

How did you celebrate Mother’s Day?

Why is your mum so special to you? Tell your teacher!

Mother’s Day, or Mothering Sunday, is a time when children pay respect to their mothers. Children often give their mothers a gift and a card. What did you do for yours?

On Mothering Sunday (yesterday) many churches give the children in the congregation a little bunch of spring flowers to give to their mothers as a thank you for all their care and love throughout the year.

Mother’s Day is always on a Sunday. It is also known as Mothering Sunday In Britain, it is always the fourth Sunday of Lent.

The History of Mothering Sunday No one is absolutely certain exactly how the idea of Mothering Sunday began. However, it is known that on this day, about four hundred years ago, people made a point of visiting their nearest big church (the Mother Church).

People who visited their mother church would say they had gone "a mothering."

Young British girls and boys 'in service' (maids and servants) were only allowed one day to visit their family each year. This was usually Mothering Sunday.

Flowers given as a gift were traditional, as the young girls and boys would have to walk home to their village, and could gather them on their way home through the meadows.

Often the housekeeper or cook would allow the maids to bake a cake to take home for their mother. Sometimes a gift of eggs or flowers from the garden (or hothouse) was allowed.

Simnel Cake The most favoured cake was - as it still is in some families - the ‘Simnel Cake'. People began honouring both their mothers and the church at the same time.

The Simnel cake is a fruit cake. A flat layer of marzipan (sugar almond paste) is placed on top of the cake and this is decorated with 11 marzipan balls representing the 12 apostles, minus Judas, who betrayed Christ.

In America Mother’s Day is always on 2 nd May and is a national holiday.

Whilst Mothering Sunday is celebrated on different dates and for different reasons in many countries around the world, the central idea of honouring your mother is universal.

Be good to your mum!

A prayer to say Thank You for our mums. Loving God We thank you for mothers – for all they mean or have meant, for the love they have shown and the care they have given. We thank you for the qualities of our mums – their patience, their kindness, concern and understanding. We thank you for the part they play in our lives, and we thank you for this day of saying ‘thank you’, this opportunity to say what we so often mean to say but so rarely do. For mothers and motherhood, for children and families, we bring you our grateful praise. Amen

The Lord’s Prayer Our Father, who art in Heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done On Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread And forgive us our trespasses As we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation But deliver us from evil. For thine is the Kingdom, the power and the glory. For ever and ever. Amen

Let Your Light Shine ~ learning to care and to lead for today and tomorrow