It’s Mothering Sunday today. Curiously, along with Christmas, Easter, and Remembrance Sunday, Mothering Sunday stands as one of the four days of the year when Church of England churches are likely to be full. There’s something primal and visceral about going back to see one’s mother on Mothering Sunday, and somehow this manifests itself in a larger number of people than usual heading down to church with, or to remember, their mother.
Its significance was even sharper in 2020. We may have blotted it from our collective memories, but Mothering Sunday 2020 fell on that fateful weekend just as we began to realise the full horror of the Covid pandemic. Although formal social distancing legislation was not brought in until the following day, most people resolved not to make their annual pilgrimages that Sunday, choosing to protect those we loved in the most counter-intuitive manner possible.
Not that Mothering Sunday is ever uncomplicated….
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Mothering Sunday lives on because the dream of our familial relationships is worth honouring, even if most of the time we honour them more in the breach.
There is perhaps something similar in our relationship to the parish church. https://t.co/zG48STk4gg
— The New Statesman (@NewStatesman) March 19, 2023