May 11 2025 - Mother's Day Legends

 

What do people do for Mother's Day to get in the Guinness Book of Records?   The oldest mother to conceive naturally turns out to be Dawn Brooke, of the U.K. in 1997.  That's a record about giving birth rather than about Mother's Day. And that's where the Guinness Book of Records goes for Mothers.  Here's the weird one: In 2008, when she was 56, Jacelyn Dalenberg agreed to be a surrogate mom for her daughter, Kom Coseno. Jacelyn successfully carried and delivered three healthy granddaughters, who were delivered by C-section at a Cleveland hospital. That makes her the oldest woman to give birth to grandchildren.  And then there's the record for the most number of children - in the 1700s (supposedly and highly unlikely) - the wife of Feodor Vassilyex (she has no first name on record) is claimed to have given birth to 69 children - 16 pairs of twins, 7 sets of triplets, and 4 sets of quadruplets.   But that's all about giving birth.   Are there strange celebrations? Yes, in Peru, they visit their mothers who have past at the cemeteries. In Australia, they give "mums" to mums (chrysanthemums). Mexico's Mother's Day starts with Las Manzanitas serenade.  In Nepal, they visit Mata Tirtha Pond - which is dedicated to showing love and respect to mothers, living and deceased.  Ethiopia has a three-day celebration for Mother's Day. Thailand combines its celebration of their queen with Mother's Day.  In Japan it is red carnations that are traditional on Mother's Day.  Aren't these all sort of sweet, but tame?  Compare that to Chicago breaking the record for the biggest game of catch on Father's Day with 2,000 people participating.

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Did You Go A-Mothering?

We haven't left Mother's Day yet.  We found out about Mother's Day in the US. It is very different from Mothering Day in England.  In England it is celebrated far earlier in the year.  From Wikipedia: Mothering Sunday is a holiday celebrated by Catholic and Protestant Christians in some parts of Europe. It falls on the fourth Sunday in Lent (For Orthodox Christians in Europe and elsewhere, the fourth Sunday in Lent remembers St. John of the Ladder). Secularly, it became an occasion for honouring the mothers of children and giving them presents.  During the sixteenth century, people returned to their mother church, the main church or cathedral of the area, for a service to be held on Laetare Sunday. This was either a large local church, or more often the nearest cathedral. 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 by conflicting working hours, and servants were not given free days on other occasions. By the 1920s the custom of keeping Mothering Sunday had tended to lapse in Ireland and in continental Europe. In 1914, inspired by Anne Jarvis's efforts in the United States, Constance Penswick-Smith created the Mothering Sunday Movement, and in 1921 she wrote a book asking for the revival of the festival; Its widescale revival was through the influence of American and Canadian soldiers serving abroad during World War II ; the traditions of Mothering Sunday, still practised by the Church of England and Church of Ireland were merged with the newly imported traditions and celebrated in the wider Catholic and secular society. UK-based merchants saw the commercial opportunity in the holiday and relentlessly promoted it in the UK; by the 1950s, it was celebrated across all the UK. The Wisteria are showing colour on Yates Street in St. Catharines so will be blooming in the 2 weeks.