by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Valentine’s Day is generally celebrated with couples giving gifts of candy, flowers, jewelry and other presents or by going out to a romantic dinner, though few know about its hazy origins, dating back to 3rd Century A.D. Rome, when, as the great empire was staggering toward its epic fall, Saint Valentine, said to be a priest and doctor in Rome or the bishop of Terni, located north of the Imperial City, was beheaded by Emperor Claudius II Gothicus during a persecution of Christians.
The Roman Catholic Church continues to recognize Valentine as a saint, although he was excised in 1969 from the Church’s General Roman Calendar because information about him and his life was too sketchy and incomplete. Not only is St. Valentine the patron saint of lovers, but he maintains that role for those who have epilepsy and for apiarists (that is, bee-keepers.)
It has been suggested that a holiday commemorating St. Valentine was established to replace the Roman pagan festival of Lupercalia, held on 15 February and which celebrated fertility in agriculture as that connected to Rome’s mythical founders, Romulus and Remus, with one story relating that young women would place their names in an urn and Rome’s bachelors would pick from this and be their beaus for the year.
St. Valentine’s Day was established by the Church in the late 5th Century, but, it was during the Middle Ages that, under the idea that 14 February marked the beginning of the mating seasons for bids, that it took on the romantic associations. This included the earliest recorded valentine, a poem written in 1415 by an imprisoned French duke writing to his spouse. Meanwhile, Cupid, a cherub based on Eros, the Greek god of love, began to make more frequent appearances as part of the holiday.
Written notes or cards and small tokens of affection marked much of the holiday in the English-speaking world from the 17th century onward and, in 1840s America, the earliest mass-produced Valentine’s Day cards were produced by Esther A. Howland, known as the “Mother of the Valentine” for her ornate “scrap” comprised of pictures, lace and ribbon. Now, with some 150 million cards distributed a year, Valentine’s Day is second to Christmas when it comes to greeting card consumption.
In 19th century Los Angeles (which has a very appropriate name for Valentine’s Day), there was, as elsewhere in the country, a gradual evolution and increase in the celebration of the holiday. The 30 January 1872 edition of the Los Angeles Star briefly noted that February would be marked by balls for Valentine’s Day and the birthday of George Washington. The Star of 15 February 1873 recorded that “the postoffice department,” located in a building owned by F.P.F. Temple, “did a rushing business yesterday” and added that “St. Valentine’s Day is a valuable one for Uncle Samuel.”
For the following year, the Los Angeles Express of 12 February observed that
The bells and beaux are waiting anxiously for Valentine day. They are laying up their small change to buy and send elegant or grotesque missives.
Elsewhere, auctioneer Elipha W. Noyes advertised a raffle of 500 tickets at $2 each for a “VALENTINE WORTH HAVING!!” comprising a carriage and a pair of horses with harness, robes and a whip, these provided by the Fashion Stables of George R. Butler (then Los Angeles city treasurer and half-owner of what became portions of today’s Diamond Bar and the adjoining Tres Hermanos Ranch.) The winner was to be announced on the holiday, which fell on a Saturday, at 1 p.m.
Another aspect of the celebration of the holiday in 1874 was that the St. Patrick’s Benevolent Society, whose members were of the large Irish and Irish-American community in the City of Angels, was hosting a ball. The following year, the Express wondered whether Valentine’s Day would be celebrated on Monday the 16th because of general observations of the Sabbath frowning on anything not religious. Its competitor, the Herald, however, demurred, suggesting “Cupid is used to doing double duty on Sunday, and he will hardly forsake his post” just because the holiday fell on the holyday.
In 1878, the Express published a lengthy essay on the holiday, observing that in England, Scotland and parts of France, there was the honoring of “a very peculiar and amusing custom” on the 13th involving unmarried persons pulling names of their fellows from a vessel of some type and “the person thus drawn became one’s valentine.” The paper also discussed some of the purported Roman origins and Middle Ages commemorations of the holiday, as well as modern celebrations, though these were focused on England, including the use of “grotesque” caricatures of persons with “burlesque verses” appended to them.
The Star of 22 February took umbrage at the fact that a “malignant fiend” ran a Valentine’s Day piece that apparently targeted the paper’s editor with a comment reading “Wee Kant take a Paper edditted by you or enny other preechur.” After stating that “we don’t believe in valentines generally,” the proprietor launched into a bitter diatribe against the “valentine fiend” who was warned that if something similar was offered the following year, “there might be fatal consequences.”
The day after the holiday in 1882, the Los Angeles Times, which was launched just a couple of months prior, commented that,
The fourteenth of February has been looked forward to by the young and romantic with pleasure for years and when yesterday came around if the gentle reader had taken a stand at the postoffice in this city he would have been amused one minute and saddened the next. In olden times before the American got funny, St. Valentine’s day was looked to by the bashful lovers as the time for pleading his case before the chosen one for his heart. But now, alas, the tables are turned and more hearts are made sad by the villainous characters and miserable doggerel sent out broadcast . . . On the other hand romance still remains in the breasts of a few and out of the thousands of valentines sent through the postoffice yesterday a number of these were made happy.
The Herald of Valentine’s Day 1883 offered more historical reflections, in which it noted that it was not fully established how the sending of valentines came about, though it referred to the Lupercalia and its replacement, along with the choosing of names in a drawing, but it added that “the name valentine was no doubt given to this custom for the reason that it was possibly the most popular surname of the Latin language in the first and second centuries after Christ.”
After referring to crude woodcuts from 17th century England, the paper repeated that the sending of valentines in modern America was usually about ardent attempts to win the heart of the beloved. Yet, it complained, “a large majority of the valentines sent to-day will be of the cheap kind, which intensify certain physical traits or mental weakness.” These involved caricatures of the recipient wrought with malice and “some explanatory lines of execrable doggerel” and represented “the ugly side of the day.” While there were those who “burn the midnight gas in labored prayers to the Muse,” the Herald concluded, “these effusions” that were published in “the editorial sanctum through the mail” ended up “out through the waste basket.”
By the Boom of the Eighties, with a surging population in the city and county, the holiday began to be more widely celebrated, including house parties, balls and dances held by organizations, and sometimes appropriated as part of the many real estate projects that sprung up throughout the region.
For example, the Herald of 8 February 1887 informed readers that “all who wish a precious valentine will go to Monrovia by the grand excursion to that charming place on St. Valentine’s day,” this being the first public event held at the newly established town in the San Gabriel Valley. With a free lunch and a tour of the subdivision, though it was carefully noted that no sales would take place that day, it was opined that it was “a charming way of spending Valentine’s Day” and that,
It is supposed that every young man who is in love will take his best girl with him as his valentine and present her a fine lot in Monrovia as a proof of his undying devotion.
By the end of the decade, the boom yielded to the inevitable bust, but the 1890s saw a significant expansion of the celebration of Valentine’s Day. In 1892, a trend for school children involved the presentation of Valentine boxes and also mentioned were poems garnished with roses held by Cupids, while “Prang valentines are lovely as usual, abounding this year in sweet child faces, with dimpled hands pressed to their hearts.” Louis Prang was a major manufacturer of cards and was instrumental in popularizing Christmas cards in America from the 1870s onward. 1892 being a leap year, as is this year, “pen and ink sketches” and comic (those distorted and brightly-colored grotesqueries mentioned elsewhere) varieties were also popular.
Another trend was in the publishing of short stories, including one in the Times of 14 February 1897, in which a young business man visited his fiancé after a tough day at work and a promise to take his mother to the opera only to find that his “best girl” was angry but would not tell him why. It was only after he noticed that she was wearing the same outfit of the prior year that he recalled that he’d proposed to her the prior Valentine’s Day and begged forgiveness.
The Times of 14 February 1894, also had some amusing little bits of verse related to the holiday, including one addressed to the postal carrier, and which included these lines:
O, pleasant postman, tell me, do!
Has Cupid made a league with you?
And does he hide his arrows light
Inside the letter squares of white . . .
O, pleasant postman, be sincere
And tell me, have I cause to fear
That this white case to me will bring
A poisoned arrow that will sting? . . .
I charge you by your coat of blue
And buttons bright, to me be true.
If there is one whose heart is mine,
Bring only his dear Valentine.
Four days later, the paper published a lengthy meditation on the holiday, saying it was more observed in 1894 than in past years, or “so say the dealers in gauzy trifles.” Yet, there was also the disquietude of noting that “this is the time when the latest scorn and sarcasm in Young America for all conventionality run rampant” because of the prevalence of those unnerving caricatures or the picture of the “help” having to answer the doorbell or knock as such valentines were delivered.
Even when valentines were not of the grotesque kind, there was an unseemly attraction to opulent cards of hand-painted satin and silk that could cost as much as $50, a considerable sum at the time. The reporter took “a tour of the various stores in the city carrying these goods” and found “an opportunity to see many phases of human nature,” observing that men typically relied on the good judgment and taste of the salesperson, while noting “the women spend more time buying a 25-cent valentine than do the men with a $5 one, and as a characteristic of their sex compel the salesman to show all of his stock before buying.”
It was also noted that there was a tendency, after the holiday ended, for “a large number of indignant and furious individuals” to go to stores “with the request for the most hideous valentines in stock.” These persons, having received those unpalatable caricature cards, desired to get back, although it was added that the ugliest cards were sold before the 14th. After a decline in purchasing and sending valentines, there was a definite increase for 1894 with “the largest local dealer” telling the Times that demand was 50% higher than the previous year.
By 1896, however, there was some discouraged reports in the local press about the celebration of the holiday. The Herald of the 14th grumbled that
The observance of the once sacred day has degenerated in this sordid and unromantic age, and it is left almost wholly to the malicious who desire to vent their spite anonymously, or the vulgar who see in the “comic” valentine wit and humor not to be surpassed.
It claimed that it was “only the little children [who] remain the conservators and devout believers” in the “sweet old faith which has been too soon forsaken by a faithless and cynical world.” The Times noted that “gaudy comic valentines” dominated in the shops and “glare forth everywhere, horrible nightmares in design,” though it added that there was a new subject, as the bicycle was all the rage at the time. For those investing in the expensive cards, it was recorded that those made with celluloid and imitation parchment were in vogue, but were still considered “inferior to the valentine of former days.”
The paper concluded its discussion by reporting that “one local dealer says that the custom of sending valentines is dying out” but “another declares it is rapidly growing.” A visit to the post office led to the view that “it is verging to extinction, and that there is no longer the great annual deluge of valentines of days of yore.” The Times elsewhere went into some detail about new gifts for the holiday involving the well-to-do including bicycles; heart-shaped jewel cases and photo holders (the presentation of photos as gifts was highlighted as a trend in 1895); mink scarves; pin cushions; hat pins; profusions of flowers encased in satin boxes; candy and crystallized fruit placed in vases; and, for men, opera glasses, pocketbooks for jewelry, silver cases for playing cards, shoe horns, and clothing brushes.
While there were continuing reports of declining observances of the century came to a close, there were also notes of a trend for women to have dresses specially made for Valentine’s Day parties and vignettes on cards showing “The Vitality of St. Valentine” with a woman dressed in her finery jugging alternating hearts and money bags. Another more popular element of the holiday were increasing issuances of marriage licenses on the holiday and it is interesting to see that, for 1900, one of the women who got hitched that day was Winnie A. Valentine, a 22-year old resident of Long Beach, who married 29-year old Ernest Bovee of Monrovia.
We can assume that those who decried the decline and degeneration of Valentine’s Day were older persons who could not appreciate the attitudes of the young who were, after all, the main celebrants of the holiday. Fears that celebrations were in decline or headed to extinction or insignificance were, of course, unfounded. The commemoration of 14 February by lovers of all ages, even if perhaps principally among younger persons, very much continues today, though who knows what the future holds?