Mother’s Day always takes place three weeks before Easter (Picture: Getty) Why is Mother’s Day on a different date each year? Like this article? Sign up to our newsletter to get more articles like this delivered straight to your inbox Happy Mother’s Day! It’s Mothering Sunday today, March 14, which means it’s time to celebrate the strong, caring and inspiring maternal figure(s) in your life – even if you aren’t able to go inside her home to visit her. Traditionally, Mother’s Day was known as ‘Mothering Sunday’ when Christians were encouraged to visit their mother church where they were baptised. Children who worked were given the day off to be with their loved ones and would present their mum with flowers and bake them a simnel cake (a light fruit cake with a layer of marzipan through the middle). However, it is now accustomed for people to honour their mums with cards and token gifts as a way to show their appreciation for them. Hilary Mantel’s interests, apart from the Tudors, include ghosts and the haunted. She also used to be a social worker. This mix is brought together in a weird semi-autobiographical plot involving four characters and their reactions to a haunted house, and a haunted existence. What makes this book so enjoyable is the way Mantel is sure to explain away every haunting with a reasonable explanation, but then will have another character experience the same ghost, hindering these reasons with another inexplicable side.

Mother’s Day started out with religious origins, but is just an excuse to treat your Mum today. (Picture: Getty) Why is Mother’s Day on a different date in the US? While the observance is worldwide, why do we all celebrate it on different days, and why does the date change in the UK? The campaign for a national observance was started in 1908 by West Virginia activist, Anna Jarvis, who campaigned for a holiday in honour of her mother, who was a community activist. It became an official US holiday in 1914 when the president at the time, Woodrow Wilson, declared the second Sunday in May as a day of ‘public expression of our love and reverence for the mothers of our country.’ Widow Evelyn Axon is a psychic, or so she says. She lives with her adult but mentally impaired daughter Muriel in their big old house. She accepts they must obey the ghost that exists there, who leaves notes in rooms with instructions that often make Evelyn very uncomfortable. Muriel has a secret life, and punishes her mother by making out she’s less capable than she is, and is now pregnant. Evelyn is baffled as to how she managed it. Muriel’s social worker Isabel is having an affair with married man Colin, whose sister lives next door to the Axons. How can they help the weird pair of neighbours, and how can they save themselves from their own miserable lives?So we are grateful and we appreciate both – our biological mothers and mother earth. We are here because of this mother and that mother. Every day of your life, you should appreciate all the things and all the people who are contributing to make your life what it is today. Everything that is needed for your wellbeing is just being taken care of by the creator. Every moment, every step that you take, the planet is not giving in and breaking up. Every breath that you take, the air is not escaping from the atmosphere and denying you. All these millions of motherly or fatherly forces are working every moment of your life. You did not ask and you are not paying a bill for all these. Simply everything is provided. So for everything that nature and people around you are providing, shouldn’t you bow down to everything in absolute gratitude? Because you are incapable of conducting your life without all these forces co-operating with you, without being asked.

This is one of the best representations of living in a haunted house out there, and the slow familial psychological poisoning that goes with it is perfectly painted. When Mantel was asked recently if she believes in ghosts, she said, “I know of ghosts…” and that’s how this book will make readers feel. There’s no doubt ghosts exist for this book, but how are they known? Why do they linger after death? What secrets do the Axons keep that cause the bad energy in their house to thrive, and what will happen after the baby comes? In the US, though Mother's Day, was founded by a woman called Anna Jarvis in 1908 to honour mothers and holds no religious ties. Jarvis' mother had wanted to see the establishment of such a holiday in the US, and after her mother's death, she led the movement for the commemoration.Every year all over the world, people celebrate their mums and mother figures on a special day known as Mother’s Day.

In other countries, including the United States, the day wasn’t founded through religion and is specifically referred to as Mother’s Day.

This was when Christians would visit their ‘mother church’ which is why we often refer to the day as Mothering Sunday. Join 1.2 Million people from around the world, get wisdom articles delivered in the mailbox for free. Mother’s Day isn’t the same in every country though, so to make sure you don’t get mixed up here’s everything you need to know about Mother’s Day in the UK, including why it's celebrated… When is Mother’s Day in the UK?