story by Jordan Pupa
On February 14th, every year people all across the United States and beyond exchange stuffed animals, cards, flowers, candy, and other gifts with their loved ones. Valentine’s Day has experienced a transition into pop culture that has shaped the way it is celebrated. In fact, according to Statista, U.S. sales generated from Valentine’s Day gift purchases made up about 19.8 billion U.S. dollars in 2017. Surprisingly, tastes vary by state and the traditional conversation hearts are the number one Valentine’s Day candy sold in South Carolina. However, there is so much more history to Valentine’s Day than gift giving. Do you know how Valentine’s Day came to be?
While there are conflicting stories, the roots of Valentine’s Day are cited by some sources to lie in the ancient Roman festival Lupercalia, a fertility celebration, largely because it took place each year on February 15 and included a matchmaking lottery. But it was also ancient Rome that saw the famous execution of a St. Valentine on February 14, around 278 A.D. According to legend, he wrote a letter on the night before his execution to his jailer’s daughter, whom he had befriended, and signed it, “From Your Valentine.” Over two centuries later, Pope Gelasius ordered that Lupercalia be replaced with the February 14 observation of St. Valentine’s Day. Some believe this set the tone for the day’s forthcoming tradition of exchanging love messages. As the years went on, Chaucer and Shakespeare romanticized the holiday in their work, and it gained popularity throughout Britain and the rest of Europe.
By the 1700s, Valentine’s Day made its way from Europe to the United States. It was common in Europe for friends and lovers to exchange small tokens of affection or handwritten notes. One American woman, Esther Howland, was so intrigued when she received her first English valentine greeting in 1847, that she became infatuated with the idea of manufacturing them in the U.S. After procuring materials like high-quality paper and lace from her father, a stationer, she created what many credit as the earliest American Valentine’s Day greeting cards. Howland is still honored with the nickname “Mother of the American Valentine.”
Today, the holiday has become a booming commercial success.
Check out the timeline of events from HubSpot.com that have helped shape Valentine’s Day into what it is today.
1714 – Charles II of Sweden begins communicating with flowers and assigning a different message to each type. This tradition allegedly assigned love and romance to the red rose.
1822 – The Cadbury chocolate company sells the first heart-shaped box of chocolates in England.
1849 – Howland produces a dozen sample Valentine’s Day cards and sends them off with her brother to distribute during a sales trip for their father’s company hoping to earn $200. Instead, he returns with 25X that amount, indicating a much higher-than-expected demand.
1866 – Conversation candies are developed, when Daniel Chase — brother of New England Confectionery Company (NECCO) founder Oliver Chase — uses vegetable dye to print words onto confections.
1870 – Howland incorporates her booming card business as the New England Valentine Company, operating out of her home via an assembly line that was largely comprised of her friends.
1880-1888 – Howland sells the New England Valentine Company to the George C. Whitney Company. Whitney has acquired at least 10 competitors, including Berlin and Jones, which had become New York City’s “largest manufacturer of Valentines.”
1894 – The Hershey Chocolate Company is founded, bringing what was previously “a European luxury product” to the U.S.
1902 – Conversation candies become heart-shaped.
1907 – The Hershey Chocolate Company introduces Kisses candy.
1913 – Hallmark produces its first Valentine’s Day card.
1948 – The De Beers diamond company launches its “A Diamond is Forever” campaign, sending the message that gifting high-end jewelry can be used as an expression of love.
2005 – Valentine’s Day begins to go digital. On February 14, 2005, YouTube — which originated as an online dating site — makes its debut.
2013 – Ride-sharing company Uber rolls out “Romance On Demand,” allowing users to send flowers on Valentine’s Day via the app.
2016 – NetBase, a social media analytics platform, releases a Valentine’s Day Sentiment Analysis, measuring how people engage with and discuss the holiday on social media. In total, it measured nine million mentions of Valentine’s Day, with the vast majority of them mentioning a specific brand — Netflix. The top hashtag was #happyvalentinesday.
