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Thursday, May 24, 2012

CULTURE

Vintage Valentines

I’ve never been one to insist on elaborate Valentine’s Day rituals. In junior high, I reveled in my bouquet of carnations, each one sent as part of a class fundraiser by suitors, frenemies, and BFFs, and truth be told I still have the three-foot tall card my first boyfriend sent. But, beyond that, the idea of overpriced roses and prix fixe dinners simply seemed too contrived.

Valentine’s Day was not always a so-called Hallmark holiday. In fact, in the Middle Ages, declarations of love were sung to prospective mates. The first written valentine is thought to be a poem written in 1415 by a duke imprisoned in the Tower of London. In the mid-1700s, men copied verses from special valentine booklets onto gilt-edged paper. (Can you imagine your tough guy hunkering down at the desk to do that these days?) In the Victorian era, valentines, usually photographic postcards, were so popular that it was fashionable to invite guests to leaf through one’s collection. (Um, snore.) By 1850 cards, were mass-produced, making it easy, and thus expected, for everyone to send them.

According to the Greeting Card Association, an estimated one billion valentine cards are sent each year, making Valentine's Day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year, behind Christmas. This figure excludes the Valentine’s that kids exchange in classrooms.

Here’s a sampling of the vintage valentines eBay has to offer, from hundred-year-old lacy confections to kitschy tokens of friendship.

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