Valentine's Day Postcards
Happy Valentine's Day!
Valentine's Day, as with many of our holidays, began in ancient times. I'm not going to go back that far, just into the late 19th century.
Did you know that for much of the 19th and early 20th century Valentine's Day wasn't strictly a lover's holiday? It was a general occasion for giving cards of greeting, light humor or teasing, and social compliments. It was common for women to send them to women friends, and men to send them to men friends. Neighbors and co-workers would exchange Valentines. It was the polite thing to do.
Postmarked 1909, to Stanley from his "Pal-o."
In the Victorian (1837-1901) and Edwardian (1901-1910) eras there were several categories of Valentine's Day cards.
Those for friendship were sentimental, often with flowers, doves, lace, and messages such as "With kind regards this St. Valentine's Day."
c. 1908-1912
"Vinegar Valentines" were teasing, cheeky, sometimes outright insulting and sarcastic. They were often sent anonymously. These were very popular from the 1840s through the 1910s.
Not cheeky, but the sender did send this anonymously in 1915.
A rebus puzzle postcard from c. 1906, part of a series of rebus Valentines. The illustration is by Richard F. Outcault, a cartoonist most famous for his series with Buster Brown and dog Tige. The card publisher, Raphael Tuck & Sons licensed Outcault's art, but they didn't always license full character sets for every product line. Some had Buster and Tige, others Tige alone. This is their series where children other than Buster Brown were featured, and Tige might have been considered as playing a cameo.
The heart-shaped candies with messages have been around for more than 100 years! They used to come in other shapes as well. Have you read Beatrix Potter's Pigling Bland? If so, Pigling had conversation sweets with "moral sentiments." In the Edwardian era motto candies often read "Be Good," "Do Right," and "Keep Your Word." (If you only know Potter for her The Tale of Peter Rabbit, I encourage you to widen out to her other fabulous stories!)
Some of us remember the Valentine's Day card exchanges in elementary school. In the 1920s and 1930s this was already a thing, without the convenience of the boxed classroom packs.
What happened later was companies, such as Hallmark, appropriated the holiday and commercialized it as being a day for love, couples, and courtship.
...I LOVE ❤️ font on the first one.
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