I have always found it funny that kids give out Valentine’s Day
cards. The commercial holiday about saying I love you to your significant other
quickly became a marketing tool for selling cards and candy to even kids.
And parents fell for it, whole-heartedly! What we do in the name of LOVE.
Valentine’s greetings in written form started in the 1400’s. Valentine’s Day is not just
celebrated in the United States but also in Canada, the United Kingdom,
Mexico, France and Australia. All Valentine’s wishes were
hand-written until the 1900’s when printing technology had developed. From then
on, cards were printed. Valentine’s Day sends the second largest
volume of cards of any holiday, right behind Christmas.
One of the most amazing facts around the holiday in the USA is that 58 million pounds of chocolate candy are sold every Valentine’s
Day week. That's a great volume of sugar making for one hyper nation! 145 million Valentine’s Day cards are bought, exchanged and mailed
each year. As of 2018, sales for jewelry
are $4.7 Billion and $2 Billion on flowers. Total spend for Valentine’s Day holiday
is $19.6 Billion per the National Retail Federation. What a great deal of expense to express an
emotion of LOVE. Wouldn’t it be cheaper to simply say “I love you?”
I worked in a Lingerie department years ago. Leading up
to Valentine’s Day, men flocked to the department. They all were looking for something red or an
intimate sexy item. None of them seemed
to have a clue of what size their wives wore. The cell phone images some had of their wives revealed a bad estimate on their parts. And head shots guys are not helpful in estimating sizes for women's clothing! We were routinely asked, based on OUR body type, what size they should
buy.
This is a hard call for anyone in sales, especially when
it is a gift from a husband to his wife. None of us wanted to start a World War
in a home. Hence, we usually took the
same approach, suggest they estimate with a teeny bit of direction and go with the smaller of the two sizes so as to make
certain all is kosher on the home front!
It was rather amusing how many of the gifts seemed to be
purchased for themselves. Many men are bold shoppers and made no secret of it
either. We really did not need to hear this or ANY particulars!
I am certain their significant others did not want us to as well as many were frequent shoppers with us which is why they were told to come there.
Some men
brought their children in shopping with them into the lingerie department. Valentine's shopping for the sole purpose of buying pajamas or a nightgown is one thing but sexy items is another. And thong undies all
lace is not something kids want to see! Some purchases and fathers checking out items for their mommies seemed abit much for the kiddies!
To make it even more uncomfortable, some men would ask their children to
help pick out item choices and it was real clear the children were not happy-campers
picking out mommy’s sexy outfits or undies!
Regarding children, I still find it comical that children in grade
school have to buy cute paper cards and hand them out to all their classmates.
Well actually, if their parents work, which most do these days, their
parents have to go pick out and buy Valentine’s cards for the kids to take to
school. Many of the cards
taken to school don’t even have the names of the kids in the class on the envelopes anymore, if they are placed in there. The kids find it as much of a hassle as the parents. It has become the "Total No Name Game", their first experience at "Speed Dating" and "Flash Friends." What
happened to giving the cutest ones in the box to your best friends? At least
keep that tradition, poor kids.
Can you believe that the kids at school are giving cards
with hearts on them to the classmates they ignore, the ones they taunt and tease,
and even worse yet, the ones they bully? Wouldn’t a card saying I am sorry or I will
stop be more loving and appropriate?
What’s more, the child that is harassed by other students
is made to give an I LOVE you Valentine’s Day card to other kids that make his
life a living hell. What’s normal about
that? Doesn’t that give a bully another
chance to knock him in the head as he walks by? How about a card that says Good
luck finding true LOVE with an attitude like yours? That seems like a better card to the bullies in the class. And the mean girls, why can't the card's back say "Get out of the Dark Side."
One year I went through some of my grand-kids cards
post-Valentine’s Day. Wow, you can deduct a few things looking through them. First, it’s easy to see which parents bought them last year on
clearance, the characters are passé! You have the cards with the children who
write sweet little words on the back with their signature, so darling, so few. There is that other group that at least
write their name so you know who it’s from. The other group is the lazy group, nothing there, just a blank back. No name, no shame. Parents are AOL and the kid doesn’t care about the dang cards
either. They probably feel like me about
the whole card thing and are only interested in the candy at
the Valentine’s Day party.
The cards manufactured for children say some real
stupid things. Why can't they come up with original material after all these years? It is bad when the kids tell you that too! The lines are right up there with the
Conversation Hearts but the cards aren’t edible, unfortunately. You would be
real popular in class if they were. They’d hold that box of hearts while eating them a whole lot longer than
they are ever going to hold that paper card. It’ll be pitched
inside of 24 hours. But they will feel loved by all their classmates for having
gotten them, right?
This tradition with passing out cards in schools for
Valentine’s began in the 1930’s when cards became Mass produced. It is a waste
of money for the children living in poverty and feel they have to conform. Cut back on eating to buy Valentine's, somewhere to somebody that makes sense. Do kids in school really care about reading a
whole bunch of cards? It’s hard enough to get them to read their text
books.
Perhaps this is why some areas
are banning the celebration of Valentine's in schools. They feel the time spent is
unnecessary, in states like Florida. If it
is deemed essential and American because of the message, even to children,
let’s start insisting employers give employees time off of work to celebrate too.
At least adults are old enough to know what love is.
And so it goes, the money we spend for Valentine's Day, for LOVE.
LOVE is as simple as the little
things you do for those that are the most important in your life even more so than what
you buy and what you say. Real LOVE doesn’t have a price tag but is sweet and priceless!
I don’t despise Valentine’s Day, I have confectionery hearts in my home too! Happy Valentine's Day to you & yours!
