The birth of the Valentine and how Feb. 14 became a national holiday
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Esther Howland was 21 when she created the first mass-produced Valentine’s Day greeting card.
She’d moved back home in 1848 and got a job at her father’s stationery store on Summer Street in Worcester, Massachusetts. The burgeoning community had just been incorporated as a city, one article says. Howland had graduated from Mount Holyoke College about 52 miles west the year before.
A note decorated in Victorian-style lace and ornamentation arrived in the mail from England. It was a Valentine greeting from her father’s colleague.
Earliest Valentine on record
- One of history’s earliest known valentines was written by Charles, the Duke of Orléans, a member of the French Royal family, in 1415, according to History.com. The 21-year-old man wrote it to his second wife, 11-year-old Bonne of Armagnac.
- During the Hundred Years War between England and France, Charles was a prisoner for 25 years. During his imprisonment, he wrote a poem to his wife, addressing her as “My very gentle Valentine.” But his valentine had a much darker tone than most people are used to.
- The poem read as follows, “Since for me you were born too soon, And I for you was born too late. God forgives him who has estranged me from you for the whole year. I am already sick of love, My very gentle Valentine.”
- Charles is reported to have written hundreds of poems to his wife, but she died before he was released in 1440.
Howland was enamored with the mail delivery. She got some paper and set out to recreate the card that had been sent to her dad. Throughout the next year, Howland formed a business dedicated to creating Valentine’s Day greeting cards and hired a team of women “to cut lace, trim hearts and stencil flowers,” the Washington Post reports.
“Howland was soon turning out thousands of valentines to meet demand. She later incorporated her business, sold it for a profit to George C. Whitney and made a name for herself among the few female entrepreneurs at the time,” the Post writes.
Though Howland never married, her cards helped ignite the romantic sparks for countless lovers at a time when Valentine’s Day was becoming increasingly popular. A tradition of exchanging cards every Feb. 14 had begun and over time, she became known as the “Mother of the Valentine.”
The tradition of exchanging Valentines began in the 1600s but the origins of the holiday date back 1,500 years earlier. The man who inspired it was a third-century Roman priest known as St. Valentine.
Who was St. Valentine?
As a priest, Valentine would often perform secret marriages for couples because the reigning emperor at the time outlawed marriage. The emperor wanted soldiers in his army and he figured married men would be distracted so he made the practice of matrimony illegal.
Eventually, Valentine’s secret marriage ceremonies were discovered. The emperor sentenced him to death and put him in jail.
While in jail, Valentine fell in love with a woman who happened to be his jailor’s daughter. She would visit him on a regular basis and send him love letters.
Prior to his death, Valentine had written a letter to this woman affectionately signed, “From Your Valentine.” This greeting would forever establish him as one of the most romantic figures in history, which is why Valentine’s Day is a day of romance.
Christians would later name Valentine a saint.
The fact that Valentine’s day falls on February 14 is also significant. It happens to be the day Valentine was executed. It was also the date of an old Pagan fertility festival, in which a group of priests would get together and sacrifice a goat. A goat was believed to symbolize fertility.
The Roman priests would take the hide of the goat, shave it into small strips and slap their women around with them. (No joke!)
The women considered this a special honor because it meant the following year would be more fertile for them — and nothing says I love you like a good slap across the face.
On that note, Happy Valentine’s Day.
