Mothering Sunday - Names

Names

The other names attributed to this festival include Refreshment Sunday, Pudding Pie Sunday (in Surrey, England), Mid-Lent Sunday. Simnel Sunday and Rose Sunday. Simnel Sunday is named after the practice of baking Simnel cakes to celebrate the reuniting of families during the austerity of Lent. Because there is traditionally a relaxation of Lenten vows on this particular Sunday in celebration of the fellowship of family and church, the name Refreshment Sunday is sometimes used, although rarely today.

Rose Sunday is sometimes used as an alternative title for Laetare Sunday, as is witnessed by the purple robes of Lent being replaced in some churches by rose-coloured ones. The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia asserts that "the Golden Rose, sent by the Popes to Catholic sovereigns, used to be blessed at this time, and for this reason the day was sometimes called 'Dominica de Rosa'."

This Sunday was also once known as "the Sunday of the Five Loaves", from the traditional Gospel reading for the day. Prior to the adoption of the modern "common" lectionaries, the Gospel reading for this Sunday in the Anglican, Roman Catholic, Western-Rite Orthodox, and Old Catholic churches was the story of the feeding of the five thousand (for instance, the Anglican Book of Common Prayer stipulates St John's Gospel 6:5-14).

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Famous quotes containing the word names:

    Being the dependents of the general government, and looking to its treasury as the source of all their emoluments, the state officers, under whatever names they might pass and by whatever forms their duties might be prescribed, would in effect be the mere stipendiaries and instruments of the central power.
    Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)

    “Well then, it’s Granny speaking: ‘I dunnow!
    Mebbe I’m wrong to take it as I do.
    There ain’t no names quite like the old ones, though,
    Nor never will be to my way of thinking.
    One mustn’t bear too hard on the newcomers,
    But there’s a dite too many of them for comfort....’”
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)

    The names of all fine authors are fictitious ones, far more so than that of Junius,—simply standing, as they do, for the mystical, ever-eluding Spirit of all Beauty, which ubiquitously possesses men of genius.
    Herman Melville (1819–1891)