Each year, we celebrate the second Sunday in May as Gifts for Mothers Day. The Brits started this tradition in the 1600s, where the fourth Sunday of Lent would be celebrated as “Mothering Sunday,” and small presents were given and simnel cakes were served.

Mothers and their children would attend church and spring flowers would be passed out. Maids and servants were allowed the day off to visit their mothers. Some say this spawned the history of Mothers Day in America, although there are many other stories.

Ann Jarvis, an Appalachian homemaker, first caught headlines for her plight during the Civil War to win more sanitary working conditions and for pioneering “Mothers Friendship Day” to reconcile post-Civil War family tensions.

When she died, her daughter, Anna, began a crusade of her own in 1907 to promote Mothers Day by passing out 500 white carnations at her mother’s church in Grafton, West Virginia. She chose Sunday to make Mothers Day present because it was already a day of rest and a holy day.

West Virginia declared the holiday in 1912 and Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the first national holiday commemorating mothers in 1914, which designated the second Sunday of May for the celebration.

Ironically, Anna Jarvis grew to detest the very holiday she helped to create. Hardly nine years after Woodrow Wilson officially declared Mothers Day a national celebration, Mothers Day card sales and profits of flowers for Mothers Day were skyrocketing.

The National Restaurant Association reports that Mother’s Day is the most popular dine-out occasion of the year, even surpassing Valentine’s Day. According to IBIS World research, Americans spent $2.6 billion on flowers, $1.53 billion on pampering gifts and $68 million on Mothers Day cards in 2008. “I wanted it to be a day of sentiment, not profit,” Anna Jarvis stammered.

Mothers Day is also celebrated in Canada, Japan, China, India, New Zealand, Mexico, Greece, Iran, Turkey, Denmark, Finland, Spain, France, the UK, Australia and Ireland. To celebrate like the Brits, you can buy your flowers for Mothers Day present as you usually do, but also whip up a special simnel cake made of almonds, fruits and marzipan.

To celebrate like the French, you can host a family dinner and present your mother with a cake that looks like a bouquet of flowers. To celebrate like the Spanish, take your mother to church and spend a moment praying to the Virgin Mary.

In almost every country, the importance of women as procreator and nurturer is celebrated each year.