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Along with Coca Cola and Wonderbra, as German rock band Rammestein sings in its song titled Amerika, the US has made several other contributions to the world. Among the more benign is the celebration of Mother’s Day, observed on the second Sunday of May, which has been accepted by most countries, including India.

While today the day is celebrated by giving presents to your mother because material goods are just the best (let’s face it), that’s not how its founder wanted it to be.

The video above by Great Big Story tells us the history of Mother's Day. The holiday came into being after some heavy championing of the mother’s cause by a loving daughter, Anna Jarvis.

The foundations, however, were laid by Anna’s mother, Ann Reeve Jarvis, with roots going back to the US Civil War.

In the 1850s, according to a report in National Geographic, Ann Reeve, “held Mother's Day work clubs to improve sanitary conditions and try to lower infant mortality by fighting disease and curbing milk contamination... The groups also tended wounded soldiers from both sides during the US Civil War from 1861 to 1865.”

The group gradually became more politically engaged and began promoting pacifism between the Union and Confederate states loyalists.

In 1908, three years after Ann Reeve’s death, her daughter Anna organised the first ever Mother’s Day. In 1914 the day became an official holiday in the US.

A scholar on the subject, Katharine Antolini, told National Geographic, “For Jarvis (Anna) it was a day where you'd go home to spend time with your mother and thank her for all that she did.”

“It wasn't to celebrate all mothers. It was to celebrate the best mother you've ever known – your mother – as a son or a daughter.” That's why Jarvis stressed the singular “Mother's Day,” rather than the plural “Mothers' Day,” Antolini said.

Under commercial pressure, the day didn't remain intimate the way Jarvis planned, and turned into a gold mine for retail, while the actual story lies largely forgotten.