Today, in the U.S., hundreds of thousands of Valentine’s Day cards will be exchanged. Americans will spend close to thirty billion dollars on Valentine’s Day gifts. Close to 300 million roses were grown just for this day. Scores of lovers will pick today to propose to their intended and many will feel, even if they know it’s stupid, crushed that they, today, don’t have a Valentine.
This is my 62nd Valentine’s Day. I don’t remember the first few, but have many memories starting in kindergarten. My mom–and she still does this–made each of her kids a homemade Valentine’s Day card that awaited us at breakfast. Every year, she’d list out, in a vertical line, the first letters of our names finished off with a complimentary word. One I’ve saved from some year says this:
D elightful
A lways Reading
B right
N ice to her siblings
E loquent
Y our family loves you
This sort of handmade card, drawn with big hearts, greeted me every Valentine’s Day I was at home. I get a little verklempt just thinking about it.
I am of an age when kids brought Valentines to school and the popular kids got the most. My family moved every two or so years and so I routinely got a small pile. I recall being trying to be sanguine about this. The teachers made sure I got a few as did, I recall, the moms who ran the PTA. Usually, every classroom had a card exchange at some point during the school day and, in my favorite schools, the staff gave every child a little bag of candy hearts. It was never a day I enjoyed.
By the time I got to double digit ages, I wanted a boyfriend. I remember the dumbfounding joy I felt when, in sixth grade, Danny Foster, my first big crush, said “Happy Valentine’s Day” to me in the hall. No card, but, oh, I was sure meant something.
I didn’t get a Valentine card or gift from any boy/man, however, until I was in my early 20s. When I was in high school, not only did I not have a boyfriend–other than a passionate summer romance when I was 16–and the holiday was considered uncool. In college, my friends and I gave each other cards.
The first truly romantic Valentine’s Day I ever had was with Dr. Feelgood. I still have the earrings he gave me and the card he penned. (The man really is a sap.)
For the first twenty years of our relationship, Valentine’s Day was a big deal. We always made our kids cards just like my mom had made for me. But the real focus was on our adult love. We picked out perfect gifts and wrote deeply romantic and occasionally erotic cards. We’d go out to dinner–I’d book a sitter weeks in advance–dress up, and hold hands across the table as we waited for our food.
Over the past ten years, we’ve done less. This year we didn’t even get each other a card nor did we mail our kids cards. I can’t imagine caring about the significance of the day in the way I did when I was younger, single, and hoping to find true love.
Perhaps it’s that my goal is to have a life of love, rather than a day. Today, when I speak to my family, my friends, and my husband, I’ll say “Happy Valentine’s Day! I love you.” I called my mom this morning and, hilariously, at almost 86, she apologized that, this year, she didn’t send out any Valentine’s. I told I won the mom lottery and did not need a card.
I wish I could go back in time and tell that pragmatic, lonely little girl that someday she’d have incredible friends she’d go through life with. I wish I could reassure teenage me that she’d find a great romance (or three) by the time she was 25. I’d like to tell my younger self that, even with all its ups and downs, I have the marriage I longed for. Mostly, I wish for everyone to know that they are loved.
How about you? Do you love V-Day? Hate it? Have a lovely (or sad) memory you’d like to share?
Valentine’s Day has never meant much to me besides getting candy as a kid. I think my favorite part was buying leftover candy as a cash strapped 20-something and sharing it with my roommates. We had “galentines” before it was cool. In the past 40 years my husband and I have sometimes gone out, but mostly just bought little things for our kids and maybe a card for each other. In the past 5 or 6 years we’ve pretty much ignored the whole thing. Overall I think it’s simply a “greeting card holiday.”
I guess in a way it’s a privelege to ignore the holiday since I’ve been lucky to find someone I’m still crazy about after 40 years. Maybe if I hadn’t felt the love and acceptance most of my adult life I’d find Valentine’s Day to be a difficult day instead of a forgettable one.
On Valentine’s Day 1987, I went out to dinner with a co-worker with whom I’d been dating somewhat casually and then more seriously over the previous year. That evening, we decided to be exclusive and throw in our lot together. Two years later, we got married on the closest Saturday to Valentine’s Day which in 1989 was February 11. So this past Sunday, we celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary (the coral anniversary), and today we celebrate our 37th anniversary as “officially” a couple. We have always exchanged gifts & cards on both the 11th & 14th. When our kids were growing up, we always gave them cards and little chocolate hearts for Valentine’s. Now it’s just the two of us at home, but there were still cards & chocolate exchanged this morning—and we’ll be going out to dinner tonight (a seafood buffet in recognition of today also being Ash Wednesday and the first day of Lent).
Mr Caz and I used to observe it in the early days, but to be honest, neither of us is particularly sentimental – we express affection through snark – and it’s been quite a while since we’ve bothered to mark Valentine’s Day.. Plus, we got married on 19th February (we’ve been together 33 years, but it’s our 25th anniversary this year) although tbh, we don’t do a lot for that, either. That year – 1999 – was when we had our first Cazlet (we often joke that she was at the wedding!) – and that was more of a noteworthy event.
I think one of the reasons we haven’t celebrated Valentine’s Day much is that our anniversay is mid January, and we’re much more likely to mark that with a dinner out. For much of our married life two “nice” dinners out in succession wasn’t in the budget, especially with 5 kids and the cost of a babysitter! 🙂
Like you Caz, we don’t tend to spend $$ on stuff – or even dinner out – to celebrate our relationship. But our first date was on a Friday the 13th, May 1977. We got in the habit of marking every Friday the 13th with a kiss and a casual “Happy Friday the 13th” while we were dating. Then, when we decided to marry, we picked our dating anniversary May 13 (we’d always joked it would be April Fool’s Day but . . . reasons). On May 13, 2022, we celebrated our 80th “Friday the 13th”, during our 45 years together and 38 years married.
Valentines Day just doesn’t hold up much against Friday the 13th for us. Even our actual anniversary is mostly just another day. Like Dabney mentions above, it’s more about every day with someone you love. How fortunate we are.
What a terrific mother you have, Dabney!
Definitely won the mom lottery!
Years ago, when I taught, there was a teacher who used to send each of his friends in the teachers’ mailbox what used to be called a penny valentine, the kind little kids exchange. Mine was made out to Lynda from Jimmy M. (all in print).
I now pick up a box of Valentines every year and send one to each of my friends. I hope it makes them laugh. It does for me, anyway.
Such a nice idea!
That is lovely.
How fun! I love it when there is something actually personal in the mail.
My engagement took place on Feb 14. Not because it was Valentines day. Mine was an arranged marriage and the priest chose Feb 14 as the auspicious day for the engagement ceremony. And we got married two weeks later. It was after we moved to the US that I even knew Feb 14 is Valentines day. I have been married for 42 years and we always remember it as our engagement day but have never celebrated as Valentines day.
I got married on February 14th in 1991 in Austria because nobody wanted that slot, for the short civil ceremony. My “actual“ wedding in church was 4.4. and that was the important day, for us. I only realized years later that 14.2. was a meaningful day to a lot of people, somewhere else.
It has become a big deal by now, like Mother‘s Day, wonderful commercial opportunity, but to me, it is just a nice footnote for a discussion like this one. My husband is gone, but even with him, 4.4. was important, 14.2. was not. Some friends send a lovely heart message (mostly women) but in my peer group it is rare, my bakery might give everyone a cookie, that is how I notice the day.
When my kid’s were younger, I would give them chocolate and stuffed animal gifts on Feb 15th (half off the day after Valentine’s Day). As for my husband and myself, it varies every year. Sometimes we both buy cards/gifts, sometimes neither. This year, my husband got fresh bagels and cream cheese instead of a card, LOL. (Also this year, Valentine’s Day was on Ash Wednesday, so that was just weird, speaking as a Catholic, plus my son had a band concert, so it was not a day that we celebrated with dinner out).
I’m of the same age that grade-school Valentine’s Days involved bringing in a shoebox to decorate as a Valentine’s mailbox, and some kids got more cards than others. I was glad when my kids were in school that the rule was every kid got cards for every other kid.
I do remember in high school there was a fundraiser where you could buy a “Valentine message” for someone and they printed them all in a booklet or something like that. A lot of inside jokes were exchanged, but if you got one from a crush, it was breathtaking.
My husband and I are not big event celebrators by nature, and it works well for us. We don’t buy big holiday/birthday/anniversary gifts for each other or exchange cards because we have what we want and need and don’t feel compelled to express our affections that way. It’s a mutual thing, no harm no foul. Sadly, my kids are victims of this casual attitude towards Valentine’s Day and have outgrown the days when I’d get them a giant heart full of chocolate candy.
That said, this Valentine’s Day around 6 pm the doorbell rang. When I answered it, a delivery man holding a bouquet of a dozen mix-colored roses told me he’d tried to call my cell, which I hadn’t answered, but he had this delivery for me. I shrugged off the missed call and took the flowers. As I prepared to put them in a vase, I saw there was no card other than a generic “Happy Valentine’s Day” message. No address. Nothing. I also thought it strange that my husband would send me flowers that way (he’s more likely to bring them home himself) but it wasn’t out of the realm of possability.
He got home while I was still cutting the stems and I asked if he’d sent me flowers. He said no and meant it. I’m convinced that the flowers were delivered to me by accident and were probably meant for a neighbor. I tried to call the florist the next day but got shuttled into their voice mail system and didn’t have the motivation to pursue it.
Somewhere out there somebody got an earful for ignoring Valentine’s Day because the flowers showed up at my house instead of theirs!
A few times, my kids have sent ME flowers. It has made me so happy. I keep the cards stuck into picture frames on my desk. My favorite one says:
Happy Birthday to the world’s greatest Mom from her favorite son.
He’s one of three sons. Cracks me up every time.