Remembering Valentine’s Day
Love is in the air, and Valentine’s Day is coming. I’ve had more memories of valentines, candy, and flowers than I am willing to admit. My first memories of Valentine’s Day involves making valentines…red, pink and white…small, medium and large…fat and skinny…misshapen and perfect…decorated in every way my imagination would take me. I made them at home and later at school. I thought they were beautiful and dreamy. Valentines were everywhere during the first of February, in those days.
At school, I remember the excitement of making the mailboxes we would use to deliver our valentines to classmates and friends. Some years there would be one central box decorated by the entire class or the teacher. We would stuff the box full, as we continued to place cards into it, day after day. We watched as classmates stopped at the box to deliver their cards. On Valentine’s Day, the box was opened to reveal its treasures. It was both exciting and dreaded. What if I was the only one to get no cards? But, thankfully, year after year I got more than my fair share, validating my philosophy that it pays to be nice to everyone.
Sometimes we had individual mailboxes made by decorating a shoe box, or brown paper bag, decorated and turned down in a cuff. This allowed us to monitor our boxes and see if they were swelling with cards. Sometimes friends from other classes would sneak in to leave valentines, and in turn, we went to other classes to deliver our cards. It was almost as exciting as Christmas!
And love…puppy love…filled the air and consumed our thoughts. Did we dare declare it with a card? No, but we spent hours going over our cards looking for the perfect one to give the special person of our dreams. And, when we read our cards, we could not wait to see if the card from the special one had any hidden meanings. Often, there was a surprise valentine or two from people in other classes, we had not imagined would be sending a card, and sometimes, from an admirer we were unaware of before getting the card. Many childhood romances began on Valentine’s Day. Ah…young love…makes the heart go pitter patter!
If this was not enough, we had a great party! My mother was always a room mother and participated in the Valentine Party, as did I when my children were in school. In that time, a party meant candy, cupcakes, cookies, ice cream, potato chips, nuts, beautiful valentine napkins/plates/cups and great soda drink. It was always a treat, as we did not drink sodas on a regular basis. We played games, and had free access to float around and talk to all of our classmates. It was such a fun time!
Remember the beautiful valentines? They were usually small and single sheeted with a variety of pictures and words. They generally came in a pack with a specific theme, such as animals, outer space, cartoon characters, people with round little faces, western, Disney, nursery rhymes and many more. If it did not come from a pack, you knew the person liked you, which could be good or bad. Picking out the pack of cards we gave was arduous, as we wanted them to represent something about ourselves. Ah, Valentine’s Day holds so many fond memories for all of us.
