The history of Mother’s Day isn’t exactly warm and fuzzy

On Friday’s “The Glenn Beck Radio Program,” Glenn Beck covered the real history behind Mother’s Day, which started as an anti-war protest movement.

Anna Jarvis is credited as the founder of Mother’s Day, a holiday that has been greatly softened from its anti-war origins. In the 1870s, Julie Ward Howe, who was best known for writing the lyrics to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” promoted a Mothers’ Peace Day along with other activists. Jarvis later held the first public Mother’s Day in 1907 as a quiet celebration remembering the sacrifice of her own mother.

While Jarvis never had children, she was possessive of the Mother’s Day holiday and always added “Founder of Mother’s Day” to her signature, according to historian Katharine Antolini.

“She was a little militant,” Glenn described. After her death, there were still lawsuits going on “trying to stop those evil Hallmark people and everybody who had tried to commercialize Mother’s Day.”

Jarvis not only turned down opportunities to capitalize on the holiday, but also died penniless because all of her money went to fighting the commercialization of Mother’s Day in court. Her abhorrence of the modern celebration of Mother’s Day even extended to people using the holiday to promote charity work.

To see more from Glenn, visit his channel on TheBlaze and listen live to “The Glenn Beck Radio Program” with Glenn Beck, Pat Gray, Stu Burguiere and Jeffy Fisher weekdays 9 a.m.–noon ET on TheBlaze Radio Network.