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I would like to enter the United Kingdom version of Mother's Day into Google Calendar so that I will be able to remember it when the right time of the year comes on a yearly basis:

I've read this post and in particular the post by user Al E. which I think should have been the accepted answer as I found it really helpful.

This works for Mother's Day as celebrated in the United States, Canada, Italy, and Malta, namely, on the second Sunday of May (and I've included how to do this in Google Calendar for completeness right below from the link above):

  • Create an untimed event on May 8, 2011
  • Open event details
  • Change the "Repeats" value to "Monthly"
  • Change to "Repeats every 12 months"
  • Click the "Repeat By" radio button for "day of the week"
  • Leave "Ends Never" as is

However, now I want to add an entry for the UK Mother's Day (AKA Mothering Sunday).

I've included the following relevant quotes from Wikipedia:

  1. Let's wee when this Mothering Sunday takes place:

The United Kingdom celebrates Mothering Sunday, which falls on the fourth Sunday of Lent (15 March in 2015).

  1. Ok, so here we need to find more about Lent:

Lent (Latin: Quadragesima - English: Fortieth) is a solemn religious observance in the liturgical calendar of many Christian denominations that begins on Ash Wednesday and covers a period of approximately six weeks before Easter Sunday.

  1. OK, since Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, we need to find out when Ash Wednesday is:

Ash Wednesday, a day of fasting, is the first day of Lent in Western Christianity. It occurs 46 days (40 fasting days, if the 6 Sundays, which are not days of fast, are excluded) before Easter and can fall as early as 4 February or as late as 10 March.

But this information is not enough to be able to provide me with enough information to come up with a calendar, or even automatically store the infinite collection of dates Mother's Day in the UK takes up, encoded into some form and stashed into Google Calendar.

Anyone have an idea of how to code UK Mothering Day into Google Calendar?

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  • Um... Google should have a holidays calendar for yoyr country have you checked their public calendars list, or the add holidays button under calendars? (Changed a couple times since i first used it)
    – Thomas Ward
    Commented Mar 20, 2015 at 21:53
  • Yes, I've looked under Other calendars -> Browse Interesting Calendars and found all those entries under the Holidays tab. But the problem is, that (at least) for the countries I've tried, neither Father's Day, nor Mother's Day, is an actual public holiday (despite the fact that the event is celebrated). So, what I would like to know is, where can I search for other public calendars (public calendars which are not limited to the entries appearing under Holidays, Sports, and Other), or how can I search for such public calendars? Thanks.
    – John Higginstyne
    Commented Mar 21, 2015 at 15:14
  • You can absolutely do what you want. In fact, this question is a duplicate. Let me track down the original.
    – ale
    Commented Mar 21, 2015 at 19:06
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    Yeah, but what about the celebration in the UK. It doesn't seem to work that way.
    – John Higginstyne
    Commented Mar 28, 2015 at 8:40
  • 1
    I think this is sufficiently different from the duplicate to stand on its own. This event fluctuates based on another calendar system and isn't consistent from year to year.
    – jonsca
    Commented Apr 12, 2016 at 23:22

2 Answers 2

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All rather a rigmarole but according to those definitions it boils down to 21 days before Easter (local). Easter, being a religious festival, is steeped in tradition but considered important by lots of vested interests that are unable to agree even on one principal day each year on which to celebrate “the resurrection of Jesus from the dead”.

Mothering Sunday is connected to Easter as its origins are also religious (it is not the same as Mother's Day - one mother is the Church, the other is a parent).

There have been many attempts, or at last discussions about, a single principle day each year (worldwide) so there is no reliable way to predict the date for Easter far in advance – churches might one day reach a consensus and then for conformity some precedents would have to be broken. With no sign of agreement yet, which precedents can’t be predicted.

Meanwhile, in the UK, the convention is that Easter Sunday falls on the Sunday next after the first full moon following the vernal, or spring, equinox. In AD 325 The Council of Nicaea managed to reach agreement that observance would be uniform worldwide but it took centuries to become the first Sunday after the ecclesiastical full moon that occurs on or soonest after 21 March.

On that basis Wikipedia has a list of dates for Easter reaching 20 years back and ahead, from which deducting 21 days and sampling gives, for Mothering Sunday:

15-March-2015 (as mentioned in OP)
06-March-2016
26-March-2017
11-March-2018
31-March-2019
22-March-2020
14-March-2021
27-March-2022
19-March-2023
10-March-2024
30-March-2025
15-March-2026
07-March-2027
26-March-2028
11-March-2029
31-March-2030
23-March-2031
07-March-2032
27-March-2033
19-March-2034
04-March-2035
23-March-2036
15-March-2037

Parliament has already passed a law, the Easter Act, to fix Easter Sunday to that following the second Saturday in April. However conditions precedent, mainly that regard shall be had to any opinion officially expressed by any Church or other Christian body mean that it has never been brought into force. With ‘Christian bodies’ generally declining in influence and general secularisation it may be that the centenary of the Act, in 11 years, may be the trigger to replace the existing moveable feast with something more practical, so some of the above projected dates could be superseded by events and extending the list further best be kept for later.

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Import the events from a .CSV file

  1. Create a new file, ukmd.csv, with the following contents (thanks to @pnuts's answer for the dates).
Subject,Start date,All Day Event
Mothers Day (UK),03/19/2023,True
Mothers Day (UK),03/10/2024,True
Mothers Day (UK),03/30/2025,True
Mothers Day (UK),03/15/2026,True
Mothers Day (UK),03/07/2027,True
Mothers Day (UK),03/26/2028,True
Mothers Day (UK),03/11/2029,True
Mothers Day (UK),03/31/2030,True
Mothers Day (UK),03/23/2031,True
Mothers Day (UK),03/07/2032,True
Mothers Day (UK),03/27/2033,True
Mothers Day (UK),03/19/2034,True
Mothers Day (UK),03/04/2035,True
Mothers Day (UK),03/23/2036,True
Mothers Day (UK),03/15/2037,True
  1. Find the "Other calendars" bar on the left of Google Calendar. Click the + and select "Import".
  2. Select the ukmd.csv file. Pick the calendar to update. Click "Import". You should get confirmation 15 events were imported.

Ref: https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/37118

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