Happy Valentines Day!

Happy Valentines Day everyone! I can see dozens of roses the florist have prepared. Boxes of Russell-Stovers Chocolates passing through the checkout lines. Don’t you just love showing how much love you have for that special person or family member? We got my Mom some flowers and a couple garden gnomes for Valentine’s day.

Truth be known, we should spend every day telling and making sure our family knows we love them. I find that is what’s wrong in our world today, people have forgotten to love. If we had more love, there wouldn’t be as many crimes as we see today. The world, in general, would be a better place.

You don’t have to go all out or spend a lot of money to show someone you care about them. Yesterday at work, one of my co-workers from another department brought my department a Valentines Day card telling us how much she appreciated the hard work we do for the company. To some people, it didn’t mean much, but I admired that little act of kindness.

Without further to do, I want to share a little history behind this day. It may blow your mind like it did mine.

Happy Valentines Day and I love each one of you!

Did You Know?

Approximately 150 million Valentine’s Day cards are exchanged annually, making Valentine’s Day the second most popular card-sending holiday after Christmas.

TYPICAL VALENTINE’S DAY GREETINGS

In addition to the United States, Valentine’s Day is celebrated in Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, France and Australia. In Great Britain, Valentine’s Day began to be popularly celebrated around the 17th century. By the middle of the 18th, it was common for friends and lovers of all social classes to exchange small tokens of affection or handwritten notes, and by 1900 printed cards began to replace written letters due to improvements in printing technology. Ready-made cards were an easy way for people to express their emotions in a time when direct expression of one’s feelings was discouraged. Cheaper postage rates also contributed to an increase in the popularity of sending Valentine’s Day greetings.

Americans probably began exchanging hand-made valentines in the early 1700s. In the 1840s, Esther A. Howland began selling the first mass-produced valentines in America. Howland, known as the “Mother of the Valentine,” made elaborate creations with real lace, ribbons and colorful pictures known as “scrap.” Today, according to the Greeting Card Association, an estimated 1 billion Valentine’s Day cards are sent each year, making Valentine’s Day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year. (An estimated 2.6 billion cards are sent for Christmas.) Women purchase approximately 85 percent of all valentines.