When I was younger I loved buying those little valentines day cards with candy on them. I liked giving them out to my classmates and secret admirers. When you are young, love is pure and sweet, just like candy! I also enjoyed celebrating with friends, and giving them gifts. So I’ve just been wondering where all this Valentine’s Day products came from?

How did this tradition start? How did love become a business worth $23.9 billion in 2022, making it the second highest grossing year of all time?

Lupercalia Festival

The history is a little fuzzy but it is said that the roots started in ancient Rome, at a festival called Lupercalia. According to NPR, it was apparently bloody! It was also brutal for women. After whipping the women they would participate in a matchmaking activity. What fun (place sarcasm here)!

The St. Valentine Story

But then things get interesting. According to the History Channel, the Valentin name came from an actual man in 270 A.D. who was imprisoned and slaughtered.

Rome Emperor Claudius II needed more men in the military but a lot of the men were married and refused to join. Claudius thought it was because they didn't want to leave their families so he came up with a plan to ban marriages and engagements.

The priest Valentin continued to perform marriages in secret because he thought it was unjust. So Claudius finally found out and sentenced him to death on February 14th in a very cruel way.

Of course this is all assumed because there are two other St Valentine's that the holiday could be named after.

A couple hundred years later, Pope Gelasius killed the Lupercalia Festival and created St. Valentine’s day in exchange. The tradition was to send cute letters to each other.

That explains a little bit about where the name came from and why it is February 14th but how did it get commercialized?

Commercialization

Well, European poets like Shakespeare and Chauncer made Valentine's day come to life! They wrote about it in their work, creating a fascination for the idea of sending letters to one another.

Once it reached America in the 1800s that's when we started seeing the market development in the west. A woman named Esther Howland, from Massachusetts really enjoyed her first valentine letter from England in 1847.

She decided to manufacture a bunch of valentines day cards to sell and hopefully make a bit of money. There was a bigger demand than she thought so she had to hire more women to help her.

She was ahead of her time and an amazing entrepreneur.

Some Fun Facts

In the Hubspot article, Amanda Zantal Wiener also mentioned a lot of other fun details throughout history in connection with Valentine’s day.

For example, once Esther Howland sold her New England Valentine Company to George C. Whitney Company. They started getting heavy competition from companies like Berlin and Jones, and American Greetings.

The same year Witney Company burned down in 1910, Hallmark was born and in 1913 they created their first valentines day card.

Let’s talk about candy!

One of the first candies produced and sold as a valentine candy was the heart shaped conversation hearts.

In 1866 Daniel Chase was able to print words with vegetable dye on the conversation candies made from lozenge dough. By 1902 he turned them into hearts, making it one of the best valentines day gifts to give to loved ones.

Hersey was close behind when it was founded in 1894 and then in 1907 they started selling the classic Hersey kisses.

The Teddy Bear

Teddy bears have been a staple product for Valentine’s Day and I always wondered why. Surprisingly it was because of President Theodore Roosevelt. Mr. Roosevelt was on a hunting trip in 1902 with Mississippi’s State Governor at the time, Holt Collier.

They were having a hard time finding bears until Collier found a really old, fat bear and told Roosevelt to finish killing him. According to nps.gov, Roosevelt couldn't do it because it was “unsportsmanlike” to kill an animal that was weaker than him.

After that whole situation, Clifford Berryman made fun of him in a cartoon in the Washington Post. He created a cartoon of Roosevelt and a bear because he couldn't kill him so he was perceived as weak.

After all the buzz, two New Yorkers who owned a toy store - Rose and Morris Michtom said they were inspired by that cartoon and created stuffed bears, the “Teddy’s Bear”. As the president was called “Teddy” by friends.

America loved these bears and the thrill started to spread.

It’s unclear exactly how the bear became part of Valentine’s day. Although there are some theories.

It’s so interesting to learn the history of everyday things like this. One little idea can turn into a business or a whole holiday that millions celebrate each year. So how are you spending your money on this holiday?