Mothering Sunday 31st March

This year Mothering Sunday falls on 31st March which is the fifth Sunday of the month. Here in the Beaminster Team we use these occasional fifth Sundays as a chance to join together in one place.

The day begins at 8am with the little oasis of peace and quiet that is the BCP Eucharist Service at St. Mary’s Church Beaminster.

At 10am St. Mary’s plays host to Breakfast@10 where we invite folks to bring breakfast items to share on our bring and share breakfast buffet table. This is a lively all ages service and the breakfast gives whoever normally has to feed your family – whether mum, dad or someone else, a morning off.

These are the only services across the team on a fifth Sunday which means our multi-village scattered flock has a chance to join together in celebration, friendship, and worship under one roof.

And while Mothering Sunday has become a celebration of mothers you may be interested to know this is not the origin of the celebration. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say on the day’s origins.

During the 16th century, people returned to their mother church for a service to be held on Laetare Sunday; in this context, one’s ‘mother church’ was either the church where one was baptised, or the local parish church, or the nearest cathedral (the latter being the mother church of all the parish churches in a diocese). Anyone who did this was commonly said to have gone “a-mothering”, although whether this term preceded the observance of Mothering Sunday is unclear. 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 from doing so by conflicting working hours.

Children and young people who were “in service” (as household servants) were given a day off on that date so they could visit their families (or, originally, return to their “mother” church). The children 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.

But as you can see the celebration today is a chance to give thanks for those that cared and nurtured us – whether mothers or not. We also recognise that Mothering Sunday is not necessarily always a happy celebration for some, for many and varied reasons. We hope and pray you will find some solace in our varied services on Mothering Sunday and at the very least join us for some breakfast on Sunday.