Tracing Back The History Of Valentine’s Day Cards

Every February 14, the world celebrates Valentine’s Day. While there are different ways and traditions in celebrating the day, one thing is clear – a person will be delighted to receive a card from a loved one.

It can be common and cliché but exchanging cards has been practiced in various occasions in every culture on different generations. Giving cards works both ways. It is a simple way to express feelings yet elicits grand emotions from the receiver. Such power in stirring one’s emotions make cards one of the most common gifts on Valentine’s Day.

Statistics now show that Valentine’s Day marks the second highest card sales with 1.01 billion cards purchased every year. It is next to Christmas day. The city of Verona in Italy, where Shakespeare’s famous fictional characters Romeo and Juliet abode, gets around 1,000 letters for Juliet every 14th of February.

They say the oldest Valentine card dated 1415 A.D. The Duke of Orleans sent his French wife a card while inside the prison cell of the Tower of London. The card is now in a museum in England.

The 19th century marked the beginning of commercial cards when a post office recorded an unusually large number of letters—about 200,000 letters—on 1825. However, the commercial Valentine’s Day was introduced only after almost seven decades.

Esther Howland, an artist and publisher, printed the first Valentine’s Day card. During those times, only affluent people can afford a five-dollar to 35-dollar elaborate card. However, when the mass-produced Valentine’s Day card became available in the market, the prices of cards went down.

There was also a period in history when postage rates throughout the globe dropped. Thus, it increased both the number of people sending letters and the quantity of letters they sent. This practice of exchanging Valentine’s Day cards was once banned during the height of racial atrocities in human history. The Chicago post office recorded around 25,000 cards it rejected because of their indecency.

As time changed, the use of Valentine’s Day cards became more popular. Today, production of Valentine’s Day cards has become a large enterprise, for example Hallmark. This company has around 1330 Valentine's Day cards with different designs and messages.

The ubiquity of Valentine’s Day cards is apparent in school. Most primary schools celebrate this day and orient their little students about the tradition of giving gifts and exchanging cards on Valentine’s Day. That is why many say teachers and children receive the most Valentine’s Day cards. Just imagine how many students there are in a class exchanging Valentine’s Day cards. The mothers, wives, and lovers are also common receivers of cards.

Customized cards are sold in the market too. Especially primary schools, they teach their students to make cards on their own. For example, there is a card called rebus valentine. Its attraction and uniqueness are riddles. Another is called Thumbelina valentine because it involves the thumb. For practical and cheap Valentine’s Day card, some may use natural materials like twigs, leaves, flowers to name a few.