Celebrations - Mother's Day Traditional Cache

During an eventful camping trip over the New Year’s period of 2015 into 2016, the S.E.A.C (South East Auckland Crew) made a New Year’s resolution that each member of the team would place a cache in 11 out of the 12 months of 2016. This is the sixth cache in a series that we (AucklandReindeer and chrisandmum) will place throughout the year for this particular challenge. Each cache will give some information about the day and the reason for the celebration chosen for that month. We hope you like it and will learn something from it.

Since the Greeks and the Romans, mothers or motherhood has been celebrated in many different ways in many varied cultures. In the western world, most countries celebrate Mother's Day on the second Sunday of May, although there are variations on the date and name of the celebration.

The Mother's Day that we celebrate here in New Zealand came about in the early 20^th century when an American lady by the name of Anna Jarvis lobbied the American government to set aside a day to honour mothers after her mother died. After 5 years, in 1911, the president, Woodrow Wilson, designated the second Sunday of May to be deemed Mother's Day.

By the early 1920s the commercialisation of Mother's Day had taken hold and Anna soon started to lobby against the celebration due to the course that it was taking. She boycotted it and also threatened lawsuits against the companies taking advantage of it. She was later arrested for disturbing the peace in a protest against the commercialisation.

In England and Europe, Mothering Sunday had been celebrated since the 16^th century, but had its roots in the Church. People would go and visit their "mother church", and hence their family, on the 4^th Sunday of Lent if they had travelled away from their home parish. Later, this became the day that servants were given off to uphold this tradition. This tradition had pretty much disappeared by the 1920s, but with the influence from Canadian and American soldiers, Mother's Day traditions from the Americas came to be associated with Mothering Sunday and the celebration found new life as a conglomerate of the two celebrations.

From the hiding place, you will be able to see a place where mothers are the main focus of business. You may even have been there like we have. Remember your mother as you contemplate all that she has done for you.

• Please replace the cache where and as you found it.
• Bring your own writing implement of choice.
• Co-ordinates obtained with a phone, so may be ±5m.