"Valentine's Day in a Leap Year Brings Up Memories of Barbarous Custom of Past" from the February 18, 1960 Door County Advocate
By Doug Larson
Valentine's Day in a Leap Year Brings Up Memories of Barbarous Custom of Past
The most dangerous day for bachelors in many a moon — Valentine's Day, Leap Year, 1960 — is now interred safely among the deceased holidays, but perhaps some comments on Valentine's Day in general would be appropriate from a bachelor who has passed through enough Valentine's Days and leap years that he need no longer fear being attacked by single women with a mania for matrimony. In fact, this Valentine's Day was a little disappointing. I received not a single valentine, not even an anonymous one, a situation which, while it did not plunge me head first into the wailing wall, at least made me appreciate that I have used up my eligibility as eligible bachelor.
But it did more than that, however. It made me think back to those barbarous childhood days when Valentine's Day was a tribulation to be suffered through in the same fashion that Job put up with his boils or a man barricades his inner ear to a nagging wife.
I suspect that in many school rooms in this otherwise bright land of ours the custom is still followed by exchanging valentines on or about Valentine's Day. The common cold has not yet been cured. Leprosy still has its terrors. Crime is rampant. The exchanging of valentines by school children probably still goes on.
Perhaps this Valentine's Day custom is still carried out in the same way it was more than a quarter of a century ago when intellectual enlightenment was of considerably lower wattage than it is today. As I recall, a week or two before Valentine's Day a large hat box that must have once contained a headpiece of the Gibson Girl species would make its appearance in the school room, perhaps having been brought by a student whose mother wished it to be known that she had a new hat, maybe having been carted there by a teacher who warned to destroy the evidence that she could afford to buy a new bonnet or possibly having materialize out of air polluted by the spirit of the season.
In one way or another the big, round hat box got into the school room, had a slot cut in its top and was decorated with red and white crepe paper, lace paper cupids and red construction paper hearts. This was the valentine box, a receptacle into which the students were to drop valentines intended for each other or for the teacher.
Soon after the valentine box appeared students would begin bringing valentines to drop into its interior. Some would come carrying bundles as big as the collected works of Sears and Montgomery, while others would furtively slip a small envelope or two into the box.
By Valentine's Day the box was full to overflowing. In fact some of the larger envelopes, generally intended for the teacher but frequently for a favorite girl or boy, would not fit into the box and had to be stacked beside it.
Up until this point the custom of school children exchanging valentines seems innocent and perhaps even commendable, entirely undeserving of the unkind things I have been saying about it. Don't be deceived by this sugary masquerade.
The evil of this thing did not drop its sweet disguise until Valentine's Day arrived and distribution of the valentines began. This activity generally took place in the afternoon, ostensibly because it would not disrupt a whole day of school.
One or two youngsters would be delegated to dredge the valentines from the box and distribute them to their proper destinations. Distribution was usually accomplished by reading the name on each valentine and having in the addressee come to the front of the room to receive it.
This was fine for the popular youngsters in the class. The popular little girls would bounce up and down the aisle after valentines until they were practically panting, the stacks of valentines on their desks growing with each trip. The boy favorites of the class would make as many trips, trying, however, to conceal the pleasure they were getting from such sentimental business.
Most of the youngsters in the class got a lot of enjoyment from the exchange of valentines, but here and there about the room would be a sad faced little boy or girl who listened hopefully but in vain as the names were read off. Sometimes the valentine level in the box grew alarmingly low before some little boy or girl got a single card. It was agonizing for them to sit there with empty desks in front of them while other desks had 15 or 20 valentines on them.
And when it was all over a popular member of the class would have 25 or 30 valentines, an average one would have perhaps 15 and little Joe would sit there with three or four, trying to pretend that they didn't come from people who sent valentines to everyone in the class, and trying to ignore the cruel mathematical fact that the 20 valentines he sent out showed a very poor return.
The worst part of the whole arrangement was that youngsters did not care as much for the individual valentines as they did for the number they received. "I got 19," one would say. "I got 25," someone would reply, relegating the receiver of 19 to the rank of second class social citizen. Joe's four valentines put him in the untouchable class.
Thus it was that the supposedly gentle custom of passing out valentines became something that brought heartaches to many youngsters, heartaches that they sometimes tried to prevent by stuffing the valentine box with cards they had sent to themselves or by becoming too ill to go to school on Valentine's Day.
But that was in years gone by. Perhaps by now most schools and teachers realize the danger of the valentine box. We were not quite so astute back in the dark ages a quarter of a century or more ago.
But it still burns me up that Valentine's Day in a leap year went by without me getting a single valentine, although I can take some consolation in the fact that my six Christmas cards last year constituted a new record.
—DLL
Courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive