Vintage Valentines

With examples from the Misery Bay School, circa 1940...

Do you remember exchanging valentines in school? It seemed to be a mandatory activity during the early elementary years. The teacher provided a class roster, and we were to purchase, or rather have a parent purchase, one or two packages of valentines, which we then signed and sealed in their envelopes, one addressed to each classmate. Some even tucked a candy treat or stickers inside. Now let me add how fun and exciting this all was, for me anyway. There was the “mailbox” too, one we fashioned with instructions from our teacher. I was a connoisseur of crayons, Elmer’s glue, and construction paper - I had quite a stash of my own at home - and I remember in third grade, cutting two large hearts from red paper, then stapling them together along their edges, leaving an opening at the top. With white paper, we created lace-like embellishments, gluing them on before adding our names and taping these mailboxes alongside our desks. Akin to hanging up a Christmas stocking, it increased our anticipation.

The cool thing about handing out valentines was that everyone got one from everyone, no playing favorites, no skewing of the data due to differences in popularity. That could wait until high school. There was to be an equal distribution, though some may have slipped a little extra something to best friends, and you could certainly earmark that special card for that special someone. If I could have, I would’ve hand delivered one to my ultimate crush, Luke Skywalker, but since this was the real world, there was blond, freckled, athletic Danny, who had no lack of admirers, which in third grade meant the girls chased him around the most during a game of tag at recess. I took special care in signing the valentine I chose for him, and a further confession: I gave it a kiss before placing it in the envelope, something that had me absolutely giddy, my brain bathed in a flood of feel-good neurotransmitters.

On the arrival of the big day, it was a tad chaotic what with everyone scampering about, trying to deliver twenty-five or so little envelopes apiece. Passing by my desk, I couldn’t help but glance at my own mailbox, the sight of which, given all the greetings it now contained, generated a most pleasant feeling of belonging. Of course it was the card from Danny that I looked forward to the most. Had he signed it with great care, and sealed it with affectionate thoughts of me?

Back at our seats, we dug in, tearing at envelopes, laughing at jokes, indulging in some sweet sugary satisfaction as Teacher came around delivering her valentines, and while I don’t know what Danny thought of my card, I know what I thought of his. It was clearly his mother’s handwriting on the envelope, and it was clearly his mother who’d signed his name on the card. So disappointing! And come to think of it, he was rather a bully, including the day while playing on the monkey bars, he told me I had a face just like a monkey, contorting his own to show me what he meant. I laughed though it cut deep, and stood in front of the mirror when I got home, half wondering if maybe he was right. To this I say, give me the boy any day who writes his valentines out himself!

Nostalgia is a powerful force; it soothes those stings of the past. It also drives sentimentality, the holding on to not only memories, but keepsakes. While I didn’t save any of my childhood valentines, I can tell you they mostly referenced popular culture: movies and TV, comics and cartoon characters including Star Wars, Sesame Street, Superman, Garfield, Looney Tunes, Muppets, Peanuts, Care Bears, and Spider-Man. They’d be considered vintage today – yikes – but I have some that are even more so.

In the 1930s and 40s, my dad and his sister Anna attended the one-room Misery Bay School, where exchanging valentines was serious business among the country kids. Back then, most were printed on thick cardstock, and many had moving parts along with a sort of kickstand for displaying them upright on a table. And themes? Cowboys for one. A cousin of my dad’s once lamented that kids today don’t know what it is to have heroes, not like back in his day when they had cowboys to look up to. Yeah, yeah.

Amazingly, out of what amounted to several hundred valentines, I found just one example of a recognizable character: Jiminy Cricket, who debuted in the Disney movie Pinocchio in 1940.

Some were a tad suggestive, though they may have gone over most kids’ heads. And a few were downright rude, though also signed by first cousins, so I’ll assume there was an “understanding.”

You may want to scroll past this part. I wasn’t going to post any of the racist examples. While it’s important to acknowledge the reality of the past, I don’t want to inadvertently perpetuate it. However, when I realized two that my aunt received came from her teachers, Thomas Walton and Onni Kangas, I changed my mind. Let it be known.

How about war for a more pleasant topic? In the 1940s, with WWII ongoing, it was a common valentine theme. Soldiers, paratroopers, Red Cross workers, even one referencing the rationing of sugar.

All-in-all, it’s a collection that amounts to a whole lot of cute and clever going on. With bright graphics, so many puns, so many rhymes, and lots of slang, there’s surely one to get any Valentine’s heart to jumping.

These all have a part that rotates; they clearly came from the same set.