Technically, England celebrates Mother's Day on Mothering Sunday (the 4th Sunday in Lent in the Western Liturgical Calendar, exactly 3 weeks before Easter Sunday). Although most English would be hard-pressed to tell you that, or explain the difference between the two.
Mothering Sunday came first; it was a religious day, for people to attend their "mother church" (such as the local cathedral).
That practice was falling somewhat into disuse at the start of the 20th century, when Woodrow Wilson launched (the secular) Mother's Day in the US in 1914, as a result of a campaign by a woman named Anna Jarvis, whose mother had died on the 9th of May.
An English woman, Constance Smith, became aware of the campaign. Smith was a High Anglican, though, and felt that Mothering Sunday already basically fulfilled the role of a day for honouring mothers; so when the idea gained traction over here, it was on the earlier date (and the two became somewhat conflated in English minds).
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Technically, England celebrates Mother's Day on Mothering Sunday (the 4th Sunday in Lent in the Western Liturgical Calendar, exactly 3 weeks before Easter Sunday). Although most English would be hard-pressed to tell you that, or explain the difference between the two.
Mothering Sunday came first; it was a religious day, for people to attend their "mother church" (such as the local cathedral).
That practice was falling somewhat into disuse at the start of the 20th century, when Woodrow Wilson launched (the secular) Mother's Day in the US in 1914, as a result of a campaign by a woman named Anna Jarvis, whose mother had died on the 9th of May.
An English woman, Constance Smith, became aware of the campaign. Smith was a High Anglican, though, and felt that Mothering Sunday already basically fulfilled the role of a day for honouring mothers; so when the idea gained traction over here, it was on the earlier date (and the two became somewhat conflated in English minds).