Fantastic February 14th Facts

Chocolates, flowers, hearts, harps… so, maybe not harps, but February 14th will soon be here and Valentine’s Day will once again grace us with it’s presence. I have my outfit ready. I will be wearing my pink gnome shirt with hearts and might even be super naughty and order a heart shaped pizza. Now that you have be privy to my epic Valentine’s Day plan, I have 5 Valentine’s Day facts that I think you will enjoy.

1. Have you ever wondered where the pastel-colored heart treats came from? Candy hearts date back to 1866. Daniel Chase, whose brother founded the candy company NECCO, came up with the idea of printing sayings right on the candy. NECCO started churning out miniature candy hearts, then called “motto hearts.” The candy hearts are an acquired taste, often described as tasting like chalk. Manufacturers combine sugar, corn syrup, cornstarch, flavors, gums and colors into a mixing machine to create a dough, which then goes into a machine that presses it flat, stamps it with sayings and cuts it into hearts. Today, more than 8 billion conversation hearts are manufactured each year. I am apparently one of the people who do enjoy the taste of chalk, as I look forward to them every year.

2. Where did XOXO come from? The most common theory states that the X comes from back in the Middle Ages when people used to sign letters that way, a symbol representative of Christ because of its similarity to a cross. They would then reverently kiss the X in a show of piety. The O is believed to have come from Jewish immigrants who, also unable to read or write, arrived in North America and refused to sign documents with the Christian-associated X. The O then made the jump to meaning “hug” simply as an opposite of X, which had already come to mean “kiss.”  Another is that the “XOXO” symbol and the game Tic-Tac-Toe gained popularity at the same time, and thus X and O were already an established duo. According to Marcel Denasi, professor of semiotics and linguistic anthropology at the University of Toronto and author of The History of the Kiss: The Birth of Popular Culture, no one has kept a written record of why the symbols of XOXO were used; they simply began using them in letter writing.

3. Does wearing the color red make you more attractive? Valentine’s Day is often associated with the color red and there may be a scientific reason why red is the color of passion. Studies have shown that women wearing a standard, typical red or standing against a similarly red background in photos are seen as more attractive and desirable by men than women not wearing red or near those red backgrounds. Also, the studies showed that when men are in red or against red, women find them more attractive as well as more desirable and they are perceived as having higher status than men who aren’t wearing or near red. So, if you really want to impress your significant other, put on that red outfit you have in your closet.

4. February 14th used to be a Roman fertility festival, Lupercalia. If you are into whipping your body with the skins of sacrificed dogs and goats, then this is your festival. You are probably wondering why anyone would do this and the reason was to become more fertile. Now this festival was partly for the women’s fertility and they would actually line up to get slapped with bloody hides. The feast of Lupercalia lasted from February 13th through the 15th. 

5. Jewelry is the Valentine’s Day gift that people spend the most on. According to the National Retail Federation, the category that we typically spend the most on for February 14 is jewelry, at $5.8 billion in 2020. This amount of money spent on Jewelry is insane, but how did this come about? Jewelry came on the Valentine’s Day scene around the 1920’s. Designer houses of the day such as Krementz, Danecraft, and Jonette turned their attention to Valentine’s Day Jewelry, since they had a great deal of success marketing Christmas jewelry. Also, department stores such as Woolworth began offering inexpensive jewelry to celebrate the occasion. Although the traditional gifts of flowers, chocolates and cards remain dominant, public opinion at this time began to change. Feeling that the traditional gifts typically do not last, the public started to want jewelry, since it is something that can be kept for a lifetime. Marketed by department stores and jewelers alike, this sentiment has grown since the 1930’s. It became so popular that Hallmark even created their own line of Valentine’s Day Jewelry. By the 1980’s the Diamond Industry started to take notice of this shift in public opinion. This is when very high-end Valentine Day Jewelry began to be promoted.

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