Mother’s Day: the words conjure up shelves full of greeting cards, pink ribbons, and Norman Rockwell scenes of families serving groggy but grateful matriarchs a tray of breakfast in bed. What they don’t tend to evoke is antiwar hymns and poems and fiery denunciations of militarism. It’s a shame, because this is exactly what Mother’s Day was about for the earliest part of its history.

Many people already know the typical history of the day: after years of campaigning by Philadelphia’s Anna Jarvis, who wanted a day to celebrate the unsung sacrifices of mothers (whose domestic labor was and still is viewed as secondary to traditionally male paid work), Woodrow Wilson established the first national Mother’s Day holiday on May 9, 1914, to be celebrated on the second Sunday of May forever after. Wilson called for Americans to express “our love and reverence for the mothers of our country” in his proclamation, and to give American mothers a public “thank you.”

It took only six years for the holiday to be drowned in consumerism, and Jarvis spent much of the rest of her time on earth campaigning against its commercialization, suing those who used its name, and even trying to get it removed from the calendar. She railed against the “charlatans, bandits, pirates, racketeers, kidnappers, and termites” who had corrupted her beloved day, and died mired in debt incurred from her efforts to have it revoked.