Eco Comment – Clocks! Mothering Sunday and Lady Day

It’s official: spring has sprung and British Summer Time commences this weekend. I wrote about ‘Longtitude and Daylight Saving’ in the Eco Comment on 26.10.23 so I won’t rehash the links with Nostell Priory except to say it’s beautiful at this time of year so would make a very pleasant place to visit if you were wanting to take full advantage of the first day of extra daylight. This might be problematic though if you’re missing that extra hour of sleep; I will certainly be in this category. I am one of those people who doesn’t or can’t wake up early without an alarm clock/call. However, daylight saving was started to save money and energy, which should be applauded (despite it being to help a war effort).  

Sadly, not everyone benefits. Farmers, for instance are not particularly in favour of it. I always thought that this change in time was to give farmers that hour extra of daylight. This might be useful if you’re an arable farmer but no one has told the cows that milking is to be at an earlier time. On doing some research I discovered that farmers from Australia to USA and beyond have some very colourful views on how bad daylight saving (DLS) is and why it should be abolished. 

There is quite a lobby from many different groups of people to abolish DLS. One group is the British Sleep Society. They published an article on 23rd October 2024 for Northumbria University, Newcastle (northumbria.ac.uk) They state that ‘With sleep being central to health and wellbeing, the Society has issued a statement saying that it “strongly recommends” for …Greenwich mean Time (GMT) to run throughout the year.’ Do have a read of the article, it’s really interesting. I’m with the cows though in that my circadian rhythms are definitely at their best when I get the same amount of sleep at the same time though out the year. It does make me remember a time when on a ship we had to do ‘clocks’ on an almost daily basis when sailing from New Zealand to Turkey to keep up with the time changes. 

This leads me to another petition which was rejected by parliament in 2022. This petition proposed that we should ‘Move Mothers Day to May so it is in line with the majority of countries who celebrate it & also so mothers in the UK are not belittled by the fact that they have to lose an hour on their day when the clocks go forward an hour to mark the start of British Summer Time (BST).’ 

I feel that this might have been a slightly tongue in cheek petition but every few years, as it does this year, both events happen at the same time. Easter is very late, being a movable feast so therefore Mothering Sunday, the halfway point in Lent coincides with Clocks. The difficulty for the proposers of the above petition is that they probably don’t realise that Mothering Sunday has a religious connotation, as opposed to the more secular tradition of Mothers Day. What’s in a name? Quite a lot as it happens, because … 

This year we also celebrate Mothering Sunday in the same week as Lady Day, or the Feast of the Annunciation. Although I was aware of the term ‘quarter days’, I hadn’t realised that this date was so significant, especially for farmers throughout history. Another New Year opportunity but complicated by whether you follow the Julian calendar or the Gregorian calendar. If you’re interested in this aspect of social history please read more in the Manuscripts and Special Collections site of University of Nottingham (nottingham.ac.uk).

 Another link to follow is this Old New Year: Lady Day which explains how ‘during the medieval and Tudor periods, religion was central to everyday life. The Feast of the Annunciation symbolised renewal and hope, aligning naturally with the agricultural cycle. Lady Day’s proximity to the spring equinox, when daylight and darkness are balanced, further emphasised themes of balance and new beginnings.’  

This Eco Comment, whilst not being about things environmental per se, has demonstrated that the land and how we live is inextricably linked. It could have been much longer as my research led me in many different directions, but they invariably all return to ‘land’ and ‘farmers’. Let us hope and pray that whichever time zone we’re living in we can still make good use of our natural assets whether personal or global.  

(If you have time please follow the links to find out more about these historical connections.) 

 Sue Morgan
Eco Group