To All You Lovely Mums!

To all the mums and all those who do the Mum things all year round

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Thank you - and back to you also Sunny :)

This is the fourth Sunday of Lent and is a "half-way" mark for the faithful. Lent itself lasts for 40 days and nights from Ash Wednesday. I was going to simply give a reference for this to save mouthing off again about a Christian Season; however, I found so many minor errors in references that I decided to do my best here.
If you do your counting, you find that there are more than 40 days involved. There are various adjustments made, one being that Sundays during Lent are not counted towards the total; we do NOT fast on Sundays! It's referred to as Laetare Sunday as the introit to the Mass on that day commences "Rejoice, O Jerusalem...!" Simple really...
Mothering Sunday was the day on which we returned to our "mother church", the one of our Baptism and upbringing. It wass an oasis in the year for girls in service, especially, as they were allowed home on that day just as they were on the Feast of Stephen (St Stephen's Day), now commonly called "Boxing Day". Hence the added appelation "Mothering Sunday".
This is now much too difficult of course; few of us are anywhere near our place of origin. So, by extension, in most churches the role of the child's mother is honoured in general terms. It is quite common for the priest to present each small child with a posy of flowers to present to their mothers. This has to be carefully orchestrated, of course, and you have to know your children well as not all of them will have a mother.Usually there are teachers present who monitor what is happening and whisper to the priest in case he does not know. This is the only Sunday in Lent when flowers are on the altar as part of the "rejoice" theme.
"Mother's Day" is something which has grown and grown as a great commercial enterprise day as the world has become more secular and like other such events seems to depend on the notion that one man's loss is another's opportunity.

Orginally, the girl returning home would pick flowers along the way; she was also supposed to bake a Simnel cake as a gift for ther mother and to display her culinary skills.
"Forty Days and Forty Nights" keeps cropping up in the "Tanakh" and in the New Testament. Yes, it means "a very long time", but is in fact a month and a week. Now you think I cannot count, but...in Ancient Egypt there were ten days to a week, three weeks to what we call a month and there were twelve solar months to the year, So the year was 360 days plus five extras, used for special festivals. And, yes - they added a day every four years as well. Interestingly, using a lunar calendar of thirteen months each of twenty-eight days gives 364 days for the year.
Should you decide to bake a Simnel cake, do use one of the modern/commercial type recipes. The traditional type cake, rarely seen these days, if made in cuboid form could quite easily be used to build an extension...VBG (My apologies to those who espouse such regional "delights"!)

Mothering Sunday is the fourth Sunday of Lent. Although it's often called Mothers' Day it has no connection with the American festival of that name. Traditionally, it was a day when children, mainly daughters, who had gone to work as domestic servants were given a day off to visit their mother and family.

"...and so ​ad infinitum"!

I am humanist and don't have any religious connections and I tend to go with the modern version of people celebrating the lives of all who mother, which would include foster/adoptive/step mothers etc

I'm always happy to learn about other world views

I agree totally, which is why I made that a point. The trick is knowing how the child refers to the surrogate parent, which is why I made the comment I did. This has to be done very delicately for obvious reasons. As an example, I know one young lady, of about 30 years of age who always joins in with the young children, as that is how whe sees herself (Downes). As her mother passed away some years ago she always presents her small posy to her grandmother. She does understand her situation and refers to her grandmother as "Nan" in the normal way.