It’s possible to make a few fairly specific forecasts about Sunday March 18th. The most certain is that all over Britain mothers will receive cards, the best ones being home-made with crayons or felt-tip pens and featuring hearts and smiley faces. There may well be presents, too, carefully if clumsily packaged and probably containing one or more of the following: chocolate (in various forms), cosmetics, handkerchiefs or funny aprons.

From a more senior source (if the recipient is lucky) might come some flowers, a book, some half-decent perfume, or a subscription to a fashion magazine. If, however, he’s got it wrong (as he usually does) she might find herself with a toaster, a new iron or even a season ticket for Oxford United. It’s Mothers’ Day!
Of course, as far as the Church is concerned it’s nothing of the kind. It’s ‘Mothering Sunday’, which sounds quite menacing, really - too near ‘smother’ for comfort. Yet it did all start in church long ago, with a Lesson for the fourth Sunday of Lent which included the phrase ‘Jerusalem which is above, the mother of us all’ and a tradition of welcoming apprentices home halfway through the Lenten fast bearing simnel cakes for their mothers.

But then the greeting card industry got interested, the occasion spread to America and bingo - it was suddenly retail riches. However, there’s no doubt that the whole idea of honouring mothers, or ‘motherhood’, on a special day represents a genuine human response. It’s a welcome opportunity to recognise that mothers tend to play a rather big role in everyone’s life and to say ‘thanks’ to them. On that basis, Mothering Sunday/Mothers’ Day is definitely a ‘good thing’.

It’s also quite a good thing for the church, because families like to come together on this particular day, and by tradition (fairly recent, I suspect) posies of flowers are provided in church for the children to give to their mums - and sometimes grandmas, too. The congregation is noticeably larger and younger than usual on Mothering Sunday. Numbers are swollen by husbands abandoning the Sunday round of golf for a church pew, and children who have been slaving over the afore-mentioned cards and are quite interested to see what the posies will be like.

Because the following weekend is the feast of the Annunciation (the angel Gabriel telling Mary that she was going to have a baby), preachers may justifiably point out how crucial the role of motherhood also is in the whole Christian story. All those paintings and stained glass windows of the Madonna and Child remind us that, just like all the rest of us, Jesus had a mother who fed and nurtured him, guided him through the years of childhood and stood by him later on when things were dark and dreadful.

Some chocolate, some flowers, a phone call, a family visit to church and a nice lunch out - only gestures, perhaps, but they are ways of saying ‘thank you, mum’. She deserves it, doesn’t she?

Canon David Winter is a former Diocesan Adviser on Evangelism, former BBC head of religious affairs, a broadcaster and author of many books. www.davidwinter-author.co.uk