The author, John Marek, is executive director of the Anson Economic Development Partnership.
It seems to many that society today is waging war on the foundational traditions that we grew up with. They speak of the War on Christmas, the War on Thanksgiving and the War on Easter. Heck, Columbus Day is now Indigenous Peoples Day in many places. And Valentine’s Day, the idea of which is to pick someone you like and shower them and them alone with gifts, is the antithesis of inclusivity.
My mother was a world-class baker, and just about every year she made special Valentine’s cupcakes for me to share with my classmates at Immaculate Conception Elementary. It was my day to be “popular.” The cupcakes were white cake with either pink or red icing and a small piece of mellocreme candy in the shape of a cherub or heart on top.
One rule that was sacrosanct, even back in those less “woke” days, was that anything you did for one classmate you had to do for the whole class. With cupcakes, that made sense; it certainly wouldn’t be appropriate to bring them for just a few of your friends. Where things got a little dicier was concerning “Valentines,” the little cards that you would hand out, theoretically to members of the opposite sex you liked, but by rule, to everyone in your class.
If you look at boxes of Valentines today, they are pretty non-specific, with pictures of Frozen characters and Transformers and sports teams on them. Many don’t even mention the word “Valentine.” It’s not a big deal to give your second-grade buddy Bill a picture of a Transformer and have him give you back a picture of Cam Newton. But it wasn’t exactly like that in 1967.
St. Valentine is the Catholic patron saint of “courtly love,” and pretty much all the available Valentines back then took that theme more-or-less seriously, so you wound up giving your buddy Bill a red heart with an arrow through the words “Be Mine.” He gave you a picture of a diaper-clad infant holding a bow and arrow and proclaiming “Love.” There wasn’t inherently anything wrong with that, of course. Still, it was just a wee bit outside the typical range of interactions between 8-year-old boys, at least so far as I can recall.
Even further down the scale of appropriateness was the fact that we often gave individual Valentines to our teachers, who were … well … nuns. What can I say, it was a more innocent time. If a teacher today was found to be in possession of a card given to them by a student which proclaimed some of the sentiments professed in cards I gave to various women of the cloth, there would be, at a minimum, a thorough investigation.