Please see Styx thread on the Registered Shipmates consultation for the main discussion forums - your views are important, continues until April 4th.
Epiphanies 2023: Mothering Sunday
Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
Elsewhere Bishop's Finger has posted:
I agree, for a number of reasons such as: not all women are (or can be) mothers, some women have lost or are estranged from their children, some people have had a very poor experience of being mothered, etc.... And, while I totally agree that it's good to acknowledge women and this particular role, it can diminish them by over-emphasising motherhood at the expense of their other gifts and potentialities. I could say more but will desist.
FWIW I had a good mother but my wife did not and struggles with this Sunday every year (though she trusts me, as worship leader, not to be sacharine-sweet).
(There is more in his original post).TICTH Mothering Sunday, and the saccharine nonsense served up in many churches.
I agree, for a number of reasons such as: not all women are (or can be) mothers, some women have lost or are estranged from their children, some people have had a very poor experience of being mothered, etc.... And, while I totally agree that it's good to acknowledge women and this particular role, it can diminish them by over-emphasising motherhood at the expense of their other gifts and potentialities. I could say more but will desist.
FWIW I had a good mother but my wife did not and struggles with this Sunday every year (though she trusts me, as worship leader, not to be sacharine-sweet).
Comments
Well, that's one of the IMHO sentimental pieces of claptrap which will be churned out. The minister of the Church of my Youth used to go on about *Jerusalem above, which is the mother of us all*, but I really had no idea what he was talking about - possibly Mother Church?
There is an idea that Mothering Sunday came about in the middle of Lent, in England at least, as the occasion on which apprentices returned home for a brief holiday, presumably attending their *home* or *mother* parish church.
I did wonder about posting in Epiphanies, but I think @Baptist Trainfan (with whose views I concur) is more courageous than I...
Yes it is, but many (most?) churches nowadays seem to be channelling the secular Mother’s Day.
Cross-posted with @Spike, who is correct in what he says.
If we only celebrated human relationships like motherhood, and festivals etc that never ever caused anyone distress, we would never celebrate anything. We are crooked people in a crooked world.
Oh well, at least, apart we still have Easter ... sort of.
Which is why IME so many families are absent from church on Mothering Sunday ... either the children have been busy "being nice to mum" by making her a late breakfast; or (if said children are adults), "We'll take Mum out for lunch so there won't be time for church". Cynic, moi?
It appears to be a Law of the Medes and the Persians (which altereth not) that one must not, under any circumstances, attend church at 1030am on Mothering Sunday, and then go to lunch with one's family at 1pm or thereabouts.
(Even Easter is reduced - in SecularWorld - to Bunnytide and Chocolatemas, with yellow and light green as the proper liturgical colours... ).
I'm beginning to wonder if perhaps this thread ought to be in Hell, as I seem to be in rant mode, but there are many very sensitive issues associated with Mothering Sunday, as @Baptist Trainfan has pointed out.
We will be skiving choir this Sunday since that would require a 9am start at church 40 minutes away.
I know some people would question our attending a church that far away but those some people would also claim not to prefer we didn't go to church at all, so they can wind their necks in.
When is that? Presumably not halfway through Lent!
Thanks!
IIRC, that's the same day as in the USA.
Churchy celebrations of Mothering Sunday are no longer a thing in our place. Daffodils and chocolate used to be dished out to Mums on the day, but it has slowly faded away.
With regards to church celebrations, I think it would be easier if it was just about motherhood without inevitably being about womanhood generally. I realise that this is intended to be more inclusive, but things like flowers being given out to all the women in the congregation are intensely uncomfortable if some of those chosen are not actually women, or if trans women for eg are not chosen. Better to just stick to actual mothers.
That’s a very good point. My nephew’s wife died recently after a long illness leaving two young children, so this year I’m probably more aware of single dads. I’m also very aware of children who don’t have mothers.
Yes. Also, as an opportunity to reflect motherhood, eg, the person, histories, qualities of women and the female in scripture whether biologically mothers or not, within the Creative Power we usually refer to as Father God. But maybe we're not quite up to that yet. Requires a rather radical imagination, that kind of thing. Celebrating the female creative of God's purpose and Being? Shirley not!
Another reason a lot of people are absent is that many childless people find the day difficult.
Many childless people are childfree by choice and don't find it difficult due to not having children - more likely to be estrangement from or difficult relationships with their mothers.
But many aren’t
We make sure there are daffodils for everyone in the congregation.
You make it sound like Mum is an unwilling victim of these machinations.
I wonder why all this is so hard, and if partly it's the commercial festival which has spoiled it. It grates on me as an insincere commercialised 'happy families' thing - the sort of thing that if you didn't have a happy family when you were young, rubs your nose in it and makes you pay for the privilege as you have to do the commercial stuff so as not to offend and upset.
It's also a sort of 'normalising' thing - it seems to uphold a norm in a way that excludes a lot of people.
I suspect that, in some cases, she may be! My mother certainly didn't want breakfast-in-bed.
In previous years the church had bunches of flowers for the kids to give their mothers and also encouraged people to give them to other women in the congregation. Although I appreciated my sons giving me the flowers I'm not sure I would have appreciated being "other women" in this scenario; it seems rather second class.
Personally I would just prefer a preacher to just ignore it - I certainly wouldn't want flowers for it even if they were for everyone. It still has that 'fake happy' feeling Louise alludes to, and it's not like it's an actual church feast that has to be mentioned. Just let church be a place where the creep of commercial holidays doesn't happen.
I know, but a lot of Mothering Sunday content tends to assume all childlessness is a tragedy when many people consider it to be a positive thing. The attitude of pity is much worse.
Mothering Sunday has been part of the liturgical year since the Middle Ages. You may as well say churches shouldn’t celebrate Christmas because of its creeping commercialisation.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think it was part of the post Reformation church of Scotland until very recent times. And I haven't seen a pre 1560 mention of it, though it may be there and just not something I've seen as I tend to work on the post 1560 period.
Does MS's alter ego, Refreshment Sunday, get a look-in?
In fairness, with regard to the Kirk, post-Reformation celebration of Christmas is very recent too.
Yes I know that there are a many people who choose not to have children and I’m very happy for them. However, for those of us who didn’t choose that it can be difficult, I don’t think it’s a “tragedy” and I find the expression “attitude of pity” a bit strong.
To be honest, I find the attitude towards childless people in church on Mothering Sunday to be a little patronising, especially when after all the flowers have been given out to all the mothers, grandmothers, aunties, Godmothers etc, they then give the remainder out to “all the ladies who haven’t got any flowers” and then all the men in the congregation.
You are absolutely right, but it’s worth remembering that some people find Christmas difficult.
I have never been able to get a rational explanation. Responses have generally been pithy, short and profane. I suspect it is about a bloke invading the sisters' space.
Is that a guess or has there been research? Presumable the childless had mothers.
I’m not sure of any official research, but I’ve spoken to plenty of people for whom that is the case.
Puts up hand.
Secular christmas could have been designed to make my life a misery on all kind of fronts - and I don't want that in church. I'm from a tradition that for centuries didn't do feast days but I would have thought one of the benefits of a set liturgy would be having a good reason to do, say or sing things that can be a bit different to the modern emphasis?
I checked out the 1662 BCP and it speaks of the fourth Sunday in Lent and the epistle won't be going on a Hallmark card with flowers any time soon - it's basically covenant of law/covenant of grace teaching from Galatians and the gospel wasn't anything to do with families at all. So I think if you're going to try to play the 'tradition' card then you need to account for the fact that you can be absolutely traditional and not do any of the modern problematic stuff. (You can do other older problematic stuff instead 😉)
I've not come across anything about either Mothering Sunday or Christmas in C18th or early C19th Session records. The "occasion" I come across most often is a Sunday designated to give thanks for the Harvest, although what form Harvest Thanksgiving took, I have no idea. Presumably "thanksgiving" was the focus of the lecture / sermon / prayers / psalms. I doubt they were decorating the church.
Mothering Sunday as part of the liturgical year has nothing to do with motherhood though. Commercially it's Mother's Day which is completely different. Mothering Sunday is also not part of the post-Reformation liturgical calendar in the Church of England anyway, whereas Christmas is.