Mum's big day began with the Greeks

By CHRIS BARTON

As with so many celebrations, the origin of Mother's Day can be traced to pagan times.

The ancient Greeks felt it was a good idea to pay tribute to Rhea, the Mother of the Gods, in the spring. She was the Titan of "Earth and Fertility" - and, somewhat unusually, both sister and wife to the giant Cronus (Saturn) who had the disturbing habit of eating babies - told he would be dethroned by his own son, Cronus swallowed his offspring at birth.

But Rhea was a crafty old chook and managed to save her son Zeus by giving Cronus a rock to swallow instead.

The Christians picked up on the idea, seeing Mothering Sunday (observed on the fourth Sunday in Lent - the 40-day period leading up to Easter) as an occasion to venerate Mary, the mother of Christ.

The idea caught on and during the 1600s young apprentices and servants were allowed to skip church on Mothering Sunday as long as they took their mothers small gifts such as a trinket or a "mothering cake". Occasionally, they gave something called furmety, wheat grains boiled in sweet milk, sugared and spiced. But it didn't taste that good.

In Northern England and in Scotland, they liked carlings, pancakes made of "steeped pease fried in butter, with pepper and salt" and so delicious some decided to call the day Carling Sunday.

But the most common mothering cake is the simnel cake - a very rich fruitcake. The problem with this was the Lenten fast. No one could eat cake until Easter. So they made sure it would keep by boiling it in water, then baking it. If you were lucky it had almond icing but sometimes the crust was of flour and water, coloured with saffron.

If you want to make one this Sunday, a recipe is on the Midlands site.

In 1872 the Americans seized the idea. Julia Ward Howe, who wrote the words to the Battle Hymn of the Republic, reckoned Mother's Day should be dedicated to peace.

But that notion didn't take hold until Anna Jarvis of Philadelphia began a campaign to establish a Mother's Day holiday.

It was supposed to be in remembrance of her mother, who had, in the late 19th century, tried to establish "Mother's Friendship Days" as a way to heal the scars of the Civil War.

In 1910, West Virginia became the first state to recognise the day - followed a year later by nearly every other state. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson officially proclaimed Mother's Day as a national holiday, to be held on the second Sunday of May.

But Jarvis was not happy. Enraged by the commercialisation of the holiday, she filed a lawsuit to stop a 1923 Mother's Day festival and was even arrested for disturbing the peace at a war mothers' convention where women sold carnations - Jarvis' symbol for mothers. Never a mother herself, Jarvis died in 1948, aged 84, wishing she had never started the whole idea.

Links:


The history of Mother's Day

Greek mythology

Mothering Sunday and Mother's Day

Simnel cake recipe

Mother's Day proclamation

A history of Mother's Day