Happy Mother’s Day!

I hope the headline didn’t send you into a panic. It was not meant for your mother or to shame you because you had forgotten it was Mother’s Day.

It is meant for my mother, who lives in England and where Mother’s Day was celebrated on Sunday, March 30th. In South Africa, you have another two months to remember to buy your mother flowers or chocolates or a card.

But since this column is about faith and society let me explain why Mother’s Day in England falls on this Sunday. It is because it is the middle Sunday in Lent and traditionally, Lenten observances were relaxed on this day as a reward for getting through the first half of Lent and a way of steeling yourself for the second half.

So if your Lenten resolution is to give up cake or alcohol or cigarettes then, theoretically, you can gift yourself a small slice or a little puff or a wee dram this Sunday. (Note, though, the gospels do not record Jesus having a mid-way time-off during his 40 days in the desert!)

In medieval England, Lent was taken very seriously. For example, you were allowed no butter, no sugar and no eggs: hence the tradition of using up all those ingredients and making pancakes the day before Ash Wednesday. So a slight relaxation on this Sunday was much anticipated.

It is also shown in the Church’s liturgical vestments. If your priest is following the rubric, he will be wearing pink and not purple this Sunday. It has nothing to do with breast cancer or pink pride. Instead, it is in tune with the laetare (happiness) theme of the opening prayer in the Mass this week.

So what is the connection with mothers? Back to medieval England where a lot of poor children were sent away from home to work as domestic servants in big houses. They were never allowed back to their parents for Christmas or Easter because they would be needed on duty.

So instead, the one weekend a year they were allowed home was this middle Sunday in Lent. The tradition then grew that as children in service were reunited with their mothers, this was a day to celebrate all mothers.

The children also often took home a cake made from ingredients that were allowed during Lent, hence the simnel cake and Simnel Sunday.

All of this history is lost on the majority of English people and their mothers, but it just goes to show how many of our customs have a Christian foundation.

In a similar way, Mother’s Day in some Catholic countries is celebrated on the first Sunday in May a month dedicated to Mary, Mother of God and our mother too and in Panama on December 8, the feast of the Immaculate Conception.

But the date which is used in South Africa, the second Sunday in May, comes from an American practice. It seems to have no deeper roots than the desire of greetings card companies to promote a card-giving holiday in a month that was otherwise quiet.

In the same way, they created Father’s Day in June though some Catholic countries mark this more appropriately on the feast of St Joseph and a range of other Hallmark holidays: Grandmother’s Day, Secretary’s Day, Second Cousin’s Day, and so on. And before we get too hot under the collar about the secularisation of Christian holidays, let’s not forget our own appropriation of the winter solstice, to create Christmas, or the attempt to reclaim May 1 from the socialists as the feast of St Joseph the Worker.

What interests me about these days is what they say and what they leave unsaid.

It is wonderful to have a day to celebrate our mothers (alive and deceased), and to make them feel special by making them breakfast in bed or spoiling them in some other way.

But what is not said is that this is poor payback for the rest of the year when we take them for granted, forget about their needs, and expect them to run around us and bring us breakfast in bed!

The joke goes that the reason there is a Women’s Day and no Man’s Day is that men are already the centre of attention for the other 364 days a year. In the same way, we need to be careful when, as a Catholic community, we have a year when we celebrate the priest or religious or families. Let that not be an excuse to forget their importance for all of the other years.

So, whether you celebrated Mother’s Day this past weekend or in a few weeks or in a few months, let it not be a one-off to excuse our careless behaviour for the rest of the year, but instead let it be a chance to make amends and treat our mothers (and fathers) with respect and with love all year round.