Mothering Sunday (The Fourth Sunday of Lent), 27 March 2022, Austwick, Keasden
Mothering Sunday and Mother’s Day tend to be regarded now as more or less the same thing; though some are still aware of Mothering Sunday being an English institution with religious roots, whilst Mothers’ Day is an American holiday associated with commercialism. Both events focus on the domestic role of women, and tend to sentimentalise motherhood. Interesting then to consider the origins of the various Mothers’ Days worldwide, which tell a wider, stronger women’s story.
For Mothers’ Day was not conceived to simply celebrate traditional family values and encourage women who are mothers to keep on keeping on. The very first Mothers’ Day was less a recognition of motherhood, but rather it was a call to action by all women, around issues of poverty, public health, and reconciliation - under the banner of peace.
Way back in 1858, in the towns of the Appalachian mountains in the Eastern United States a woman called Ann Jarvis began to gather women together in what she called Mother’s Day Work Clubs. There were many poor people with poor health in these places; families struggled against disease; infant mortality was high. So in these Mother’s Day Work Clubs, women worked together to provide assistance to poor families; they raised money to buy medicine, and in homes where the mother had health problems they hired women to do her work. They developed programs to inspect milk long before this became a legal requirement. Club members visited households to educate mothers and their families about improving sanitation and overall health. The Mother’s Day Work Clubs contributed significantly to the growing public health movement in the United States.
During the Civil War, the Mother’s Day Work Clubs created medical camps, providing relief from the violence for wounded men from both sides of the conflict. And at the end of the Civil War, Ann Jarvis organised a Mother’s Day Friendship Day, where she brought together soldiers from the North and the South for a time of reconciliation. On the back of this, Ann Jarvis and Julia Ward Howe urged the creation of a 'Mother's Day For Peace' where mothers would ask the nation that their husbands and sons would be no longer sent to be killed in wars.
In 1870 Julia Ward Howe devised a Mother's Day Proclamation, calling on mothers of all nationalities to band together to promote the ‘amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.’ Women shouted the Proclamation from the streets, which began like this:
‘Arise then women of peace. Arise, then, women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or tears! Say firmly: 'Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have taught them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs’. From the bosom of the devastated earth, a voice goes up with our own. It says, ‘Disarm, Disarm!’’
Inspired by her mother’s campaigning Ann Jarvis’ daughter, Anna, petitioned for a national Mother’s Day, and in 1914 President Woodrow Wilson introduced a national holiday of that name. Balancing the demands of the peace campaigners and suffragettes with those of the anti-suffrage movement, Wilson proclaimed it ‘as a public expression of our love and reverence for the mothers of our country’.
Meanwhile in the UK Constance Adelaide Smith, a dispenser of medicine in Nottingham, was inspired by the Mother’s Day movement in the United States, but was not herself a mother, and argued for a deeper, more inclusive definition of mothers and mothering. Smith advocated for the revival of Mothering Sunday, successfully invoking the medieval traditions of celebrating Mother Church, Mother Nature, Mary, the mother of Jesus, and 'mothers of earthly homes’ - everyday women. She helped revive traditions like the practice of daughters visiting their mothers - especially important for those who were domestic servants living away from home - and the giving of simnel cakes or wafer cakes. Whilst affirming biological motherhood, like Anna Jarvis, Constance Adelaide Smith died unmarried and without children of their own; her life and campaigning affirmed the worthy tradition of honouring mothers and mothering women of all types, and strengthening that through official recognition.
There’s no doubt that commercialisation soon overtook these Mothering festivals both here and in the USA - and indeed Anna Jarvis organised boycotts of Mother's Day, threatened lawsuits against profiteering card and floral companies, and in a 1925 protest at the selling of carnations by the American War Mothers, ironically, Jarvis was arrested for disturbing the peace.
These histories help us see that celebrating mothers means more than sentiment, cards and flowers… and a limited view of what motherhood might mean. Like Mother's Day and Mothering Sunday as originally conceived, International Women’s Day commemorates the wide social achievements of women. It is also a focal point in the women's rights movement, bringing attention to issues such as gender equality, reproductive rights, and violence and abuse against women. In countries worldwide, from Afghanistan to Zambia it is a national holiday, and in Italy and Ukraine it is observed by men giving yellow mimosas to women.
So in the spirit of the occasion we celebrate today, with its worldwide reach and its surprisingly broad range of rich traditions, let us give thanks:
- in a tender moment, for the women who have mothered us so kindly and so well;
- in a time of recognition, for the women who have fought for us, and used their skills to improve our health and learning;
- in a pause for appreciation, for the women who campaign to end wars which maim and kill their menfolk, children and neighbours to no good purpose;
And let us remember today:
- the women anxious in these difficult economic times about how they can put food on their children’s table;
- the women moved by others’ plight to organise foodbanks, support groups, social gatherings;
- the women hurrying their children away from homes being bombed and besieged, seeking a new place of safety;
- and the women selflessly offering hospitality to all in need of shelter and love, whether family, neighbour or stranger.
Notes
Sources for this talk:
a. Wikipedia: Ann Jarvis, Anna Jarvis, Constance Adelaide Smith, Mother's Day (United States), International Women's Day.
b. Andrew Dunning, The medieval origins of Mothering Sunday. Medieval manuscripts blog, 26 March 2017.
c. Dawn Hutchings, MOTHERS’ DAY – Peace is the Way. PastorDawn blog, 10 May 2012
d. My sermon The bulrushes and the benefit system - celebrating battling mothers. Preached in Devon, 2013.
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