Where did it all start? Mother's day, a special day to thank our mums for everything that they do for us. 

Mother’s Day in the UK has its origins in the 16th-century custom of ‘Mothering Sunday’, which fell on the fourth Sunday of Lent. That’s three Sundays before Easter, and the tie-in with the church calendar is why the date changes each year. The tradition was that you paid your ‘mother church’ a visit – either the church where you were christened, your parish church, or the nearest cathedral – and you were said to be ‘going a-mothering’ when you did so.

On this day, which came to be known as Mothering Sunday, servants were given the day off to go back to the parish in which they were born, with children and other family members also joining in. Because this occasion was a rare opportunity for a family get-together, the focus of the day gradually shifted to visiting not just the mother church, but one’s own mother.

In later times, ‘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 given this day off so they could visit their families, 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.

By the 1920s the custom of keeping Mothering Sunday had tended to lapse in most of Europe.

On the way to the church, people gathered wildflowers to leave in the church and to present to their mothers. And, although the day fell during Lent, the austerity was relaxed for Mothering Sunday and people treated their mothers to edible gifts such as Simnel cake, ‘mothering buns’ or fig pie.