Three Cheers for Mothers

Every day is mother’s day at Strawberries & Cream. Our business began during a treasured time in lockdown, when Ingrid and her mother began sewing dresses together, just as her mother once sewed with her sisters and mother, a joyful tradition that has been handed from mother to daughter for generations.

If you need an excuse to pay homage to the wonderful mothers you know then you’re spoilt for choice. There are many festivals dedicated to them around the world, some of whose roots go back thousands of years. In the UK we have Mothering Sunday this coming weekend, which is part of the build up to Easter. Then there is Mother’s Day in the US on the second Sunday in May.

You might think that the States adopted a later date because warm weather is better suited to parties and parades. (That is why Queen Elizabeth II, who was born in rain-spattered April, picked sunny June to mark her ‘official’ birthday.) In fact the US Mother’s Day began in 1905 as part of a peace movement of mothers against warfare. Which underscores that there is a vast range of reasons to celebrate the infinite gifts that motherhood brings to humanity – and to give something back to mothers!

For us, mother worship is the mother of all traditions. Indeed the earliest deities found in the archaeological record are heavily pregnant goddesses, whose high prestige is made clear in beautifully fashioned figurines that are broad of hip and full of glorious, fertile belly.

So if you haven’t the scope to celebrate mothers seven days a week, today we invite you to think of the brave and brilliant mothers-in-waiting and new mums you know and thank them for their good work. Their little ones aren't quite ready to crayon them a card this time around.