Mother's Day. Worldwide days celebrating motherhood

Mother's Day owes its origins to several long standing traditions in Europe and the UK where a specific Sunday was set aside to honor motherhood and mothers. Traditionally the day was marked by the giving of token gifts and the relinquishing of certain traditionally female tasks such as cooking and cleaning to other members of the family as a gesture of appreciation.

While the role of the woman has become less rigid in modern day society Mother's Day (or Mothering Sunday) as it has been called in the UK dating back to the sixteenth century, remains an important day for the honoring of the role that mother's play in the home and in society in general. There is a corresponding holiday for fathers called, not surprisingly, Father's Day, but most sources site this as a more recent addition coming about in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

While considered by many as a "Hallmark Holiday", i.e. one with a purely commercial background, Mother's Day is actually a long standing tradition in the UK and several countries in Europe, Latin America and North America, and has corresponding equivalents in many countries, including parts of India and many communities in Eastern Africa and the Far East.

Dates around the world

Mother's Day is celebrated on different days throughout the world. There are two worldwide dates for celebrating "mother's day", the first one on the fourth Sunday in Lent, from the British tradition of Mothering Sunday, and the other one on the second Sunday in May.[1]

The extent of the celebrations varies greatly. In some countries, it is potentially offensive to one's mother not to mark Mother's Day. In others, it is a little-known festival celebrated mainly by immigrants, or covered by the media as a taste of foreign culture.

In Colombia, Mother's Day was celebrated this year on the 10th May.

If you want to know the dates when Mother's Day was or is going to be celebrated from around the world, click here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother

Before I was myself you made me, me [2]

Before I was myself you made me, me

With love and patience, discipline and tears,

Then bit by bit stepped back to set me free,

Allowing me to sail upon my sea,

Though well within the headlands of your fears.

Before I was myself you made me, me

With dreams enough of what I was to be

And hopes that would be sculpted by the years,

Then bit by bit stepped back to set me free,

Relinquishing your powers gradually

To let me shape myself among my peers.

Before I was myself you made me, me,

And being good and wise, you gracefully

As dancers when the last sweet cadence nears

Bit by bit stepped back to set me free.

For love inspires learning naturally:

The mind assents to what the heart reveres.

And so it was through love you made me, me

By slowly stepping back to set me free.

1. ^ "mothers day (sic)". Google Trends. Google. http://www.google.com/trends?q=mothers+day&ctab=0&date=all&geo=all. Retrieved on 28 May 2006.

2. http://www.poemsforfree.com/befor2.html