Mothering Sunday and Smothering Monday
Did you know? In days of yore, Mothering Sunday - celebrated today in certain parts of the world - was often followed by Smothering Monday. Mothers are of course the fabric of society, the "social anchors" of any community. But until the seventeenth century, mothers who had raised all of their surviving babies to at least their teenage years were regarded as a burden and strain on the village. These women had served their purpose, so their "just-reareds" (as their teens were called) would feign respect for their mothers with a Mother's Day celebration. The following morning, however, the teens would either drown these "social anchors" - who were dragging the rest of the village down, through their burdensome infirmities - in the nearby river, or suffocate them at home. Mother's Day was regarded as a celebration in the same way that the fattening of the turkey is at Christmas, or the lamb at Easter. Hundreds of thousands of mothers died in this fa...