“MOTHER’S DAY”

Waikato Times, Volume 128, Issue 21417, 10 May 1941, Page 7

“MOTHER’S DAY”

A bouquet on my breakfast tray. An expression of unaccustomed reverence on the faces of my offspring. My chair at dinner looking like a sort of throne. No—it wasn’t my first day home from hospital. ! It wasn’t my birthday or even my silver wedding. It was Mother’s j Day in New York. Americans are sentimental. They have a passion for festivals. | Elmer, touring Somerset, discovers Mothering Sunday. Any countryman can tell him that it is mid-Lent Sunday and set apart for visiting parents. A parson would tell him that the name derives J from a still more ancient custom of visiting the mother church on ; that day. Elmer isn’t interested in little details like that. Here’s a t chance to dramatise the old lady. Result—Mother’s Day. Out in the English counties Mothering Sunday is kept like a i host of other small, quiet festivals half forgotten by the cities. In i of Sussex you’ll meet family parties of children and grandchildren carrying a basket “home.” In many of the cottages you’ll smell the hot, spicy fragrance of Simnel cake baking on the day before. There is a local tradition that the bunch of flowers going home to mother must be white. It is all very agreeable. Mothering Sunday—even in the restrained English way—is still fairly new experience for me. In my native Ireland all a mother gels in the way of glamour is a lot of tenor songs. E.M.P.