International Mothers Day

Mother's Day is celebrated all around the world. It seems to be a universal thing that cultures put a day aside each year to celebrate the act of motherhood. To pay tribute both to the miracle of birth and to the special woman who performed that miracle: your mother. However not everywhere celebrates Mother's Day on the same 'Mothering Sunday' as the UK.

There are many different Mother's Day celebrations around the world, as the complicated table below makes clear! The most common alternative date is the second Sunday in May. This is the American date, and it came about like this...

For whatever reason, possibly a wish to disassociate themselves from British traditions, the pilgrim fathers who first travelled to America didn't seem to take Mothering Sunday with them. Centuries later, in 1908, Mrs Anna Jarvis set up Mother's Day as the Americans know it today, for the second Sunday in May. In 1914 she was successful, and since then this has been the date of Mother's Day in America - and beyond.