March 30: Multiple names for the fourth Sunday of Lent

From: Canon Michael Storey, Healey Wood Road, Brighouse.

MY letter (The Yorkshire Post, March 14) has brought some interesting responses from Dick Appleyard (The Yorkshire Post, March 24 and 25) and David Treacher (The Yorkshire Post, March 25).

Lent is 46 days in length, 40 days for fasting, with the Sundays being days when fasting may be suspended.

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The fourth Sunday of Lent has a greater choice of names, I think, than any other day in the whole year.

Hence it is variously called Mid Lent Sunday, Fourth Sunday in Lent, Refreshment Sunday, Simnel Sunday (when one may eat Simnel cake as 
very nicely illustrated in your Life and Style of March 25), Rose Sunday, because the priest may wear rose-coloured vestments (ie not 
the normal sombre vestments in the rest of Lent) and Laetare Sunday (Laetare = to rejoice in Latin).

Then let us to the variations on Mothers: Mothering Sunday is in general use in churches, Mothers’ Day is used to celebrate all mothers and Mother’s Day 
as a day to go back to one’s “Mother Church”, when living away from home, as was the case “in the old days”.

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