This is how Mother's Day started - The history of Mothering Sunday

Many of us call the day when we celebrate mothers,  Mother's Day but in fact, it is normally called Mothering Sunday. Here is the story of how a special day was set aside for mothers...

During the sixteenth century in Europe, people returned to their mother church - which is the main church, cathedral or largest church in a local area, for a service to be held on the fourth Sunday during Lent (the period of fasting) in the Christian calender.  Anyone who did this was commonly said to have gone "a-mothering".

According to David Self in his book, One hundred readings for assembly, he states that eventually, Mothering Sunday became a day when domestic servants were given a day off to visit their mother church, usually with their own mothers and other family members. It was often the only time that whole families could gather together, since on other days they were prevented by conflicting working hours, and servants were not given free days on other occasions.

Children and young people who were household servants were given a day off on that date so they could visit their families (or, originally, return to their "mother" church). The children would pick wild flowers along the way to place in the church or give to their mothers. Eventually, the religious tradition evolved into the Mothering Sunday secular tradition of giving gifts to mothers and more recently called Mother's Day by all other people regardless of religion.