Completely OT: "Survey" - Mother's Day cards

For starters which “Mothers Day” event are you referring to , Mothers Day is a 20th century US invention which has crept into the UK calendar encouraged by commercial interests to sell cards etc. In the US it is 2nd Sunday in May .The older tradition in the UK is Mothering Sunday which goes back to mediaeval times and moves around like Easter does , Many people in the UK now incorrectly call that Mothers Day as well and so we have more than the cultural difference between the North and South to contend with. The commercial interests would probably love the UK to celebrate both but it does give you a get out excuse in that you were going to send Mothers day cards to arrive shortly before May the 11th.

GH

Well I feel Mothering Sunday, which is what this is, is more a Northern thing than Southern thing. I believe it was the Sunday on which apprentices or domestic workers had leave to visit their mothers, usually taking flowers they picked on the journey...

.. so I too am puzzled, perhaps they have been Americanised and expect one from every relative..

Dave

Actually nowt to do with parents. Mothering Sunday is the day on which you visit your mother church.

Nearly. This is sort of true but only because they's be visiting their mother and so be in the vicinity of their mother church.

The above from SWMBO who is up on these things, having been warden of an Anglican Retreat House.

Your son and d-i-l are totally out of order. Mothering Sunday cards are for sending to *your* mother, if you have one - *not* to your grandkids' mother!

AIR it was the day that young rural servant girls were allowed to return home to their families.

Your D-in-L is bonkers. Strangers on the internet say so, so it must be true. ;-)

Tim

Agreed. Girls in domestic service would be allowed the day of to visit their mothers. My mother didn't get much other time off, when she was in service as a girl.

Alternative explanation. The son wasn't really listening to his wife (shock horror!) and the message conveyed was somehow different to what she actually said.

If that is not what happened, Son could be charged with asking for a list of people who she would expect to send a card.

Her own parents? Maybe they do send one, and that is where the odd idea originated.)

Thanks GH, and *thanks* everyone else. I'd never really appreciated the differnce between Mother's Day and Mothering Sunday.

Your comments, GH, about Americanisation are bang on: the family concerned absolutely love everything american, having had a timeshare in Florida since the DiL was a kid. By now they are probably all (as someone has said) sending each other Mother's Day cards. As a friend of mine once said, as I was fulminating about the present state of the UK/World: "It's ALL about Marketing." A kind of 21st century version of There's One Born Every Minute".

It utterly horrifies me and my wife, but we manage to keep our gobs shut in order to preserve "family spirit". What they all [now] think of You Know Who we will find out when we next make the 300-mile journey South. Wouldn't be surprised if they still think he's wonderful; or, at best, "not all bad". Which he is (all bad, I mean).

Yours, appalled, and thanks again, [Another] John

The other American “celebration “ which seemed to be introduced to the UK in recent times is the baby shower which seems to have be an excuse to be given loads of presents, that seems to have faded a bit here but it doesn’t take to much searching to find people who will organise one ,at a cost of course. Like making a list of wedding expensive presents these things can involve emotional blackmail on relatives and friends who may not be able to be that flush with their money but feel obliged to take part or be frowned upon if they don’t.

GH

Did she get more time off when she was in service as a man?

-- Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early twenty-first century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally average temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a rollback of the industrial age.

Richard Lindzen

When I first heard of it I assumed it was some pagan ritual in which a lot of women got together to piss on a new born child or something.

-- Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early twenty-first century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally average temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a rollback of the industrial age.

Richard Lindzen

Another interpretation, which gets around the complication that a lot of people don't have mothers (any more), or their mothers are Not Good People, and generally exclusionary to half the population, is to view it as celebrating 'mothering' and not 'mothers'. ie anybody can 'mother' (nurture) someone/something, even if they aren't biologically related or happen to have an XX chromosome. I think this is a more recent development but not sure how recent, and whether it's been adopted in other countries.

Theo

FFS its mothering Sunday, its traditional and no cards have ever been sent unless to ones mother.

-- “Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”

H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy

A couple of others. High School 'Prom' (complete with 'stretch limo' in order to make an entrance). 'Graduation' - even from Nursery school - complete with caps and gowns.

Absolutely right Sam. We haven't got any young relatives up here, but down in the SouthEast, at least, they seem to fall for all this s*it hook line and sinker. It's all gone mad, and the pressures of Farcebook. and other Meta products, have added petrol to the flames.

Yours, Grumpy of Tynedale

I learned of these two things from relatives who live in Essex[1] - I'm not suggesting this is specific to Essex, but it is in the South East.

The Soviet Union used to accuse the West of 'decadence'. We laughed at them then....

"Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times"

We seem to be in stage 4.