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Valentine's Day finally made its transition
from an European immigrant's celebration to a proper American holiday
starting in the 1840s.
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As more and more commercially available Valentine's
Day cards became available in the US in the 1840s and 1850s (and postage
grew cheaper), hand-made Valentines also grew in number (this period
marks the peak of Valentines collections in the US).
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American publishers cribbed liberally from
their British counterparts to produce collections such as "The
New Quizzical Valentine Writer" which appeared in New York in
1823 and seems to be the first American Valentine's Writer.
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Much like today, American publishers took
liberties with the titles of their Valentine Writers, adding words
such as "new, original, improved" regardless of the well-worn
content.
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Certain vendors tried to extend the season
until March 1 allowing for the receipt and response to Valentine's
Day cards with yet more cards-this may be related to the beginning
of the extended Christmas and Easter shopping seasons.
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By 1860, US merchants had managed to transform
Valentine's Day into a holiday where everyone exchanged cards, siblings,
friends, aunts and nephews…
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By making Valentine's Day less romantic and
more familial, and by focusing it on women's expectations (both mothers
and young girls grew accustomed to receiving cards), merchants attracted
women shoppers and changed American shopping culture. Where stores
were once "an arena where men went to trade and fraternize"
they became "a place where women would go to shop and browse."
In a sense, modern shopping as a feminine hobby can be tied to Valentine's
Day.
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Throughout the 1800s, every year brought its
own valentine's fad: "satin, lace, perfumed, and gilt-edged valentines;
painted and lithographed valentines; acrostic and arabesque valentines;
cameo or box valentines; mechanical, cobweb, and banknote valentines;
Leap Year valentines…"
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Mock Valentines also were a large part of
the market, and equal time was devoted to comic rhymes in the Valentines
Writers. In 1858 Harper's Weekly reported the sales between romantic
and mocking valentines as being split.
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Valentine caricatures were particularly popular
in the US through the 1840s-a lot of these mock valentines were aimed
at women who broke with societal convention-paralleling the beginning
of the women's rights movements in the 1840s and 1850s.
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Every Leap year, women were allowed to make
the fist move and send out Valentine's of their own.
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Even in the 1800s, people complained about
the commercialization of sentiments and the loss of sincerity.
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By 1930, Valentine's day was the second largest
retail spending day after Christmas in the US.
Sources:
Leigh Eric Schmidt. "The Fashioning of a Modern Holiday: St. Valentine's
Day, 1840-1870." Winterthur Portfolio, Vo. 28, No. 4 (Winter 1993),
209-245.
Anthony F. Aveni, "February's Holidays:
Prediction, Purification, and Passionate Pursuit" in Book of the
Year : A Brief History of Our Seasonal Holidays. New York : Oxford University
Press, 2003.
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