Valentines: An Affair of the Heart

With all the other holidays in February, why look at valentines?
 

Nostalgia.
“I remember the big box we decorated at school to hold valentines. In the mid 1940s, our classrooms had up to 40 children in them so Mom would buy many packages for all of us to have enough. She insisted each child in the class would get a valentine from us, even the boy with the snotty nose who sat behind me and pulled my pigtails.
 

For special friends and family she had red construction paper, white paper doilies, lots of LePages Mucilage (which we thought was made of rotten horse hoofs and we should not eat it but —). We spend many afternoons working on our Valentines. We certainly had a lot of fun making them,” noted Horn.

Good for the economy.
According to the National Retail Federation, Americans spent 20.7 billion dollars for Valentine Day in 2019. 145,000,000 Valentines were exchanged - not counting kid’s valentines exchanged in classrooms. Average man spends $339 (usually on jewelry and food). Women average $64 often on flowers and chocolate. 28% on American adults purchase plants or flowers for Valentine’s Day. 224 million roses were used in 2019. Think of all the red heart shaped boxes of chocolate.

Care enough to send the very best.
In 1948 Hallmark, greeting card company in Kansas, sponsored plays on television which became Hallmark Hall of Fame. Mother wasn’t much of a television fan but when those were aired we learned it was her time to choose the channel. These evolved into full length movies sold in Hallmark stores. In 2016 this branch of Hallmark became Crown Media which now has two public TV channels and one for subscribers.
 

Learn more about the history of the day from pagan celebrations, through early Christianity to today’s Hallmark Movies.

Myers Inn will be open from 11 to 2 on Saturday, February 15, for the Annual Valentine Luncheon. Soup, salad bar and dessert for a donation. No reservations needed.

A display of antique Valentines is in the Myers Inn Museum throughout February.

(01/29/2020)