If you’re in the UK, you will have been seeing reminders everywhere that it is Mother’s Day this Sunday, March 30th.

Every department store has been advertising gifts for Mother’s Day – and the color pink has been predominant.

It’s a day when dutiful sons and daughters send cards to their mothers. If they live close by, then traditionally they will visit their mothers with gifts of flowers and chocolate.

Get on a bus this Sunday and you are as likely as not to see one or two people with big bunches of flowers, and perhaps a wrapped parcel under their arms. And you can be sure that they are going to see their mothers.

The custom of Mother’s Day has got a strong hold on the consciousness and conscience of people.

After all, when is it not right to celebrate all that our mothers have done for us?

The True Origin Of Mothering Sunday

Stepping back one or two generations ago, you were as likely to hear an older name for Mother’s Day – which is Mothering Sunday.

Whichever name you heard, you would know it was a traditional holiday… a day for appreciating mothers.

So it may come as a surprise to learn that the ‘mother’ in question was originally the mother church, the home church, the church in one’s town or village.

And the tradition came about because it was young people who came home to their mother church on Mothering Sunday… young people who worked away from home as domestic servants.

Years Of Hardship, Days Of Freedom

For hundreds of years in England it was the tradition that young people in domestic service were allowed home on the fourth church day (Sunday) of Lent.

Why would domestic servants be allowed home on this day?

The answer comes from what Lent is all about.

The word Lent comes from ‘laetare’ meaning joyful. And in the Christian calendar Lent is a forty-day period of introspection, repentance, self-denial, and of acts of kindness.

So it was perhaps only natural that the masters and mistresses of grand houses and estates would feel obliged to give their domestic servants the day off to attend church in their home village.

It must have made the masters and mistresses feel good to grant the day off to their servants, and the servants must have been very grateful (note the ironic tone).

The End Of The First World War

The First World War scythed through the younger generation – domestic servants and young masters alike. The grand houses and estates did not survive the war.

Some of the most prestigious estates hung on, but over the next decades domestic service shrivelled away.

But Mother’s Day sailed through the carnage and the trauma – and the religious holiday and the joy of seeing parents became intertwined in Mothering Sunday or Mother’s Day.

Why Mother’s Day Isn’t On The Same Date Every Year

One vestige of the religious connection that continues in the UK is that Mother’s Day is not on the same day each year.

Perhaps you remember that Mother’s Day was earlier in the year last year? And you’d be correct.

Last year in the UK, Mother’s Day was on the 10th of March.

This year is falls on the 30th of March.

In 2015 it will be on the 15th of March.

The reason it ‘moves’ from year to year is that it is on the same day as Mothering Sunday… and the year in question is the religious liturgical year.

Our year is based on the sun’s cycle but in the liturgical year, the date of Easter is calculated from the moon’s cycle as well as the sun’s cycle.

And because Lent is connected to Easter, so Mothering Sunday moves from year to year.

When will Spring come?
When will the nights pull back and the days start to get longer?
When will we see the sun?
When will the grey, grey days go away?
When will the wind stop?
When will we be able to walk out without layers of clothing, without thinking of the struggle to get to the post office, to the shops, to the bus?

We’ve had almost no snow. You can see it on the hills – and you can always see the hills from almost anywhere in Edinburgh, even from the city centre.

But there has been no snow. Just a flurry or two scattered through the winter months. But nothing that has settled.

Snow is an ambivalent creature. It’s all white and welcoming, but then it turns to slush. As pure as the driven slush, as the actress Tallulah Bankhead said of herself.

Of course, in some places (I am thinking of the time I spent in Finland) the air is so dry that the snow settles and remains crisp and white for months.

And apparently the snow was knee deep in Edinburgh for months, just four years ago.

But not this year. So it has been a bit of a slog to reach these lighter evenings and some sunny days. But now the crocuses and the snowdrops are out and the sun is shining.

It is so easy to see how epic poetry and drama arose in human consciousness – the struggle through the dark and the bursting into the light – it’s all there with the seasons. It’s almost all there with each day in the changeable Edinburgh weather…

Crocuses

But now it is here.
Early signs of Spring are here.
It’s a gorgeous day and the sun is here.
Longer days are here.
Crocuses are here:

A Reminder Of Snow

So what is snow like? The scene fades from the memory so quickly I can hardly recall what it looks like or feels like. I have to dig into it to remember it.

The crunch of boots and the sudden ‘give’ as the crystalline structure loses its fight against my weight and I drop, just a fraction, into the snow.

The tiny highlights as the sun (the sun??) glints off the snow.

The sheer brightness as I look up and out and over the blanket of snow.

This is a sign to tell visitors that they are entering Bedlam.

No, it is not Bedlam as in a scene of uproar and mass confusion or madness.

And it is not Bedlam as in the world’s oldest hospital (Bethlem Royal Hospital in London) that specialises in the treatment of the mentally ill… although it is from the name of that hospital that the word ‘bedlam’ is derived.

And indeed it is not the small hamlet of Bedlam in Shropshire in England.

It is in fact as the entrance to the small village of Bedlam in the county of North Yorkshire in England.

Take the road out of Harrogate and travel north, deep into the countryside and you will find it.

The name probably comes from Old English or Norse and means ‘at the buildings’.

So no bedlam in Bedlam, but the ‘Please drive carefully’ beneath the name on the road sign always makes us smile when we pass through the village.

Bedlam As An Ecard

Follow this link and you will find this sign as an image for an ecard in Quillcards.