Mothering Sunday is in fact a very specific date celebrated by the Catholic and Protestant Churches in parts of Europe. It always falls on the fourth Sunday in Lent, exactly three weeks before Easter. In the sixteenth century Christians would return to their 'Mother Church' usually the church they were baptised in, the local parish church or in many cases the nearest cathedral, for Laetare Sunday. Those who observed this tradition were said to have gone 'a-mothering'.
In later times domestic servants would be given the day off to visit their mother church with the their families, one of the few occasions families could come together. It became common for children and young people in such service to pick wild flowers along the way to place in church or give to their mothers. By the 1920's the festival had fallen from favour and was no longer widely celebrated.
Meanwhile in America Anna Jarvis (1864-1948) whose mother died on the 9 May, led a successful campaign to have mother's commemorated in America. This resulted in President Woodrow Wilson declaring in 1914 that the second Sunday in May would henceforth be known as Mother's Day.
Inspired by Anna's campaign Constance Smith (1878-1938), a High Anglican, created the Mothering Sunday Movement to campaign for a revival of Mothering Sunday. She was the the daughter of the vicar of Coddington in Nottinghamshire, and there is a memorial to her in Coddington's church.
Enter the Second World War and a sudden influx of American and Canadian troops bringing their Mother's Day traditions to the UK and Ireland, mixing the secular and religious traditions of Mother's Day and Mothering Sunday. Seeing an unmissable commercial opportunity the holiday was relentlessly promoted by merchants in the UK and by the 1950's widely celebrated again. The result being the two have become so deeply intertwined that many people now think they are one and the same thing.
To confuse matters further some have argued that Mothering Sunday pre-dates Christianity, being linked to the vernal equinox and the Roman feast of Hilaria. While Easter itself of course has deep pagan roots, with Bunnies (or more correctly hares) for example being a leftover from the pagan festival of Eostre. While the early Christian church, faced with a defiant cake-baking pagan women, gave up trying to stop her baking and blessed the cake (hot-cross bun) instead.
Perhaps the greatest irony about the modern celebration is that neither Constance Smith nor Anna Jarvis ever became mothers themselves. Anna, who is said to have regretted the growing commercialisation of Mother’s Day, once 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."