Valentine's Day, A History...

Valentine's Day, also known as St Valentine's Day or the Feast of St. Valentine, is celebrated annually on February 14th. It originated as an early Christian feast day honoring one or more martyrs named St. Valentine, and has been widely celebrated since the 16th century. In many regions of the world, romance and love are celebrated religiously and commercially.

The first formal messages, or valentines, appeared in the 1500s, and by the late 1700s commercially printed cards were being used. The first commercial cards were printed in the mid-1800s in the United States. Valentines often depict Cupid, the Roman god of love, together with hearts, Due to the belief that the bird mating season begins in mid-February, birds also became a symbol of the day.

Around the 1840s, Valentine's Day began to take over most of the English-speaking world as a holiday to celebrate romantic love. The Victorians cherished the concept of courtly love and showered each other with gifts and cards.

Richard Cadbury, heir to a family of chocolate makers, joined this love-crazed fray.  Richard Cadbury

saw a great marketing opportunity for the new chocolates, and he began selling them in beautifully decorated boxes he designed himself.  Cadbury marketed the boxes as having a dual purpose: after all the chocolates were finished, the box itself was so beautiful that it could be used again and again to store mementos, from hair clips to love notes.

Valentine cards have been a popular way to express affection for many years. These examples date back to the Civil War.

During the 1840s, manufactured cards replaced handmade ones. During the Civil War, many manufacturers began marketing the cards to soldiers far from their loved ones.         

The disillusioned soldiers left their war-torn homes for a new life in the West after the war, where they were determined to marry and raise families.  Their only problem: There were no females to marry!

Men who were lucky enough to have a sweetheart or wife in the farthest reaches of the frontier had to travel there to meet them. The challenge was wooing them, especially on Valentine's Day.

Railroads did help the forlorn to send their loved ones trinkets of their affection. Transcontinental railroads had laid track to the west by 1869.  If the items weren't stocked on the shelves of the local pharmacy mercantile, those who could afford trinkets, poetry books, candy tins, jewelry, and toilet water could order them.  Knowing ladies loved lace and ribbons, the suitor could easily create a handmade greeting card for them.  Mail-order catalogs (Sears & Roebucks, Montgomery Ward, and Eaton's in Canada) provided jewelry, hat-pins, parasols, and rings to the man with hard cash and the desire to impress his lady during the last decade of the 1800s.

As an alternative to tangible gifts, a suitor might offer something of himself as a gift. His handwritten

love letter in his best handwriting was a gift many ladies greatly cherished.  In the Wild West, the skills that men acquired carving out a life in the wilderness came in handy when crafting gifts for their loved ones.  Hence, undeterred by abject poverty, the men in the West were determined to show their affection on Valentine's Day by making something hewed by their own hands, whether that was a leather sewing box, a wooden blanket chest, or a poem of their own making.

Today, in our post-Covid scenario, reaching out has somewhat been drop shipped.

$23.9 Billion: Total Valentine’s Day spending projected for 2022 ($175.41 per person celebrating).

$235 vs. $119: Men will spend almost twice as much as women, on average, for Valentine’s Day 2022.

$10.7 Billion: Amount Americans will spend on jewelry ($6.2B), flowers ($2.3B) and candy ($2.2B).

26%: Share of marriages that begin online.

33%: Overall online dating activity increase across the US between February 1 and February 14.

58%: Share of Americans who say that romantic gestures are more important to them now than they were pre-pandemic.

Back in 1800s, the approach was more direct.  Per the 1873 Matrimonial Time's, San Francisco... To which, an irresistible proposition was advertised...

"Any gal that got a bed, calico dress, coffee pot and skillet, knows how to cut out britches and can make a hunting shirt, knows how to take care of children can have my services till death do us part.” 

Who knew it was as simple as that?  Happy Valentine’s Day…