Mother's Day Britain versus America

Mother's Day is fast approaching us once again. Here in Britain we celebrate it in March. This year it is Sunday March 15th.

Our Mother's Day is very different to the American's version of the same day. 

The holiday has very old roots established sometime the the medieval period and for the deeply Christian people of the time, it meant that those that worked were given permission to return home to visit family and attend their "mother church". Mother's Day is always on a Sunday and many Christians still visit church for the special service. In fact Mother's Day is on the fourth day of Lent, causing it's date to vary each year because of Easter's varying date. In America Mother's Day is the second Sunday in May.

Lent traditions. Lent is a time of fasting or giving up treats, but the rules for this are often relaxed for the celebration of family reunions were daughters gave posies of freshly picked spring flowers and fresh baked cakes like Simnel cakes. 

Simnel cakes are now more often associated with Easter not Mother's Day.

Originally it was just called Mothering Sunday but during World War 2 the name was changed when American soldiers took the celebration home with them and added the commercial aspects to it.

Of course the biggest difference I suppose would lie in the fact that Americans spell it mom and we Brits spell it mum. When we create our designs we have to be careful about this. We have to take spelling into account for the two respective countries. Our website is for the Brits and has British spelling for our products. We also sell on eBay and those are made especially for our American customers. It is the only one we have to be careful about. Other family members are still the same with the same spellings. Father's Day and dad is never a problem.

Here some of our Mother's Day gifts as a sample of what we have. 

Dog Mum Mother's Day Hoodie

www.murphymorgangifts.com/product/dog-mum-mothers-day-hoodie

I'm Not A Regular Mum I'm A Cool Mum Mother's Day Coffee Mug

www.murphymorgangifts.com/product/im-not-a-regular-mum-im-a-cool-mum-mothers-day-coffee-mug

World's Best Mum Dancing Teddy Bears Cotton T-Shirt

www.murphymorgangifts.com/product/worlds-best-mum-dancing-teddy-bears-cotton-t-shirt

Welcome

 It all started in 2012 when I came across Cafepress and signed up to put my art onto their products. Cafepress, if you didn't know, is a Print On Demand marketplace company that allows artists and designers to place their art onto things like t-shirts or mugs etc. However I found it hard to use and they didn't have a payment system that was good for me as I am from the U.K.

I left that for a while until I found Zazzle, another P.O.D company that did the same thing but had everything set up better and really good forums. The forums back then were full of other artists that explained how everything worked and I soon learnt how to do things properly. I did pretty well at it for a few years. But the company changed it's setup after a while and I got less sales from it. 

I then joined Redbubble to see if they were any better. They had a fresh approach and seemed to be very attractive, especially to younger people. 

But after all the events like recessions and the pandemic I found that they weren't making much money. Royalty commissions were very low and it wasn't worth the time and effort for such little reward. Worse still was the fact that these companies now treat their artists very badly. They took the forums away. Cafepress removed artists and their details from all their products. Its as if we don't exist to them now.

Anyway, years later when I met Murphy it turns out he is also an artist. When he saw what I had been doing he was very interested. We found a company that could print t-shirts and other products for us, we decided we could set up a business ourselves, away from these P.O.D.s and do things better. With my knowledge and experience I had gained over the years and a rather large collection of art already to use, we were ready to set up our own shop. Murphy now bringing his unique artist skills and fresh ideas, we were all set to create some new products.

We set up Murphy Morgan Gifts (named after Murphy's first name and my last name Heather Moragn) in October 2024.

We now sell t-shirt, long sleeve t-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies, coffee mugs and 2 types of tote bag. Cottton shopping tote bags and canvas shoulder tote bags.

We enjoy what we do and are very excitedly adding our art designs to products, filling up our shop with what we hope to be gifts that everyone will want to have and share with their friends and loved ones.