With Mother’s Day fast approaching, you’ll already be able to spot people frantically rushing from store to store trying to find the perfect gift for their mother.
While the annual celebration is widely regarded as a consumer-driven event, it didn’t start off that way when it was created in the early 20th century.
This year, the secular occasion of Mother’s Day coincides with Mothering Sunday.
Mothering Sunday is a religious observance that’s been commemorated for hundreds of years.
From the date, the best deals and differences between traditions around the world, here’s everything you need to know about Mother’s Day:
When is it?
Mother’s Day falls on Sunday 31 March in the UK this year.
The occasion was first marked in 1908, when an American woman called Anna Jarvis held a memorial for her mother at St Andrew’s Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia.
Mothering Sunday, a religious holiday that is celebrated by Catholic and Protestant Christians in some parts of Europe, falls on the fourth Sunday of Lent three weeks before Easter Sunday.
In some parts of the world such as Afghanistan, Russia, Vietnam and Belarus, Mother’s Day coincides with International Women’s Day on 8 March every year.
How is it celebrated?
For many people across the globe, Mother’s Day is associated with the Virgin Mary and observed as a religious holiday, with some holding shrines and prayer services in churches in her honour.
Janet Heyden, a woman from Leichhardt, Sydney, became the first person in Australia to give out gifts on Mother’s Day in 1924 when she handed out presents to mothers who were being treated at the Newington State Home for Women.
Around the 16th Century, it was common practice for Christians in the United Kingdom to reunite with their mothers on Laetare Sunday, the fourth Sunday of Lent.
This tradition has since evolved into the more secular and consumer-driven Mother’s Day that we know today.
This is ironic, considering the fact that Jarvis specifically said she never intended Mother’s Day to become commercialised.
