Be still, my heart

Donna Pinter
Published: February 12, 2012

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Valentine’s Day may be a special day for lovers but it is a very special day for retailers. Sales for this year’s holiday are expected to generate $14.1 billion in the U.S. The National Retail Federation projects that consumers will spend a whopping $367 million on just their pets for the holiday.
It’s nice to know that while many things change, those tiny colored hearts known as conversation hearts remain basically the same. They are still made from sugar, corn syrup, dextrose, artificial flavors, other mystery ingredients, and, last but not least, a multiple of food colorings. The cutsie messages on the fronts of those sweethearts are somewhat more suggestive than they were years ago with messages like: Boy Craz, Will You, Ask Me, Why Not, U-R Hot-2, Yes Now, When?, Anytime, I’ll Wait.
Those heart-shaped morsels are edible for more than five years. They were invented in 1860 and the first hearts had printed paper notes inside like: “Please send me a lock of your hair by return mail.”  
There were about 8 billion conversation hearts made last year. If desired, it is possible to order candy hearts with your own sayings. The only catch is that you must buy a full production run of 107 million of the little guys. The NECCO manufacturers has entered the electronic age by inviting the public to participate online in contributing new messages.
The origin of Valentine’s Day is a tad bit dark. The Romans celebrated the feast of Lupercella in which the men sacrificed a goat and a dog and then whipped women with the hides of the dead animals. Noel Lansky, a historian at the University of Colorado at Boulder, writes that these women would actually line up for the men to swat them as it was believed that this ritual would make women more fertile.
The festival continued for several days and included a matchmaking lottery. In those rather wild times, it so happened that the Roman Emperor Claudius executed two men  named Valentine at different times. The Catholic Church celebrated the martyrdom of these two executed Valentines, and we then had the beginning of what we now celebrate as Valentine’s Day.
The first Valentine’s card was supposedly sent in 1415 from the Duke of Orleans to his wife when he was a prisoner in the Tower of London. In 1913, Hallmark cards made its first Valentines in Kansas City, Mo., and they have been going strong since.
Cards, flowers, candy and flimsy clothing items pale in comparison to the gifts available for pets. Bling-bling tiaras and collars along with doggie strollers, chewy Vuitton purses, doggie beer and wine and much, much more.
Other statistics include that Virginia is, like the license plate, the number one state for lovers as they top the list for money spent on Valentine’s Day. Most Valentine money is spent on teachers, children, moms and, finally, wives and girlfriends. Noteworthy to mention that condom sales are 25 percent higher on Valentine’s Day and sales of home pregnancy tests are the highest on the month following Valentine’s Day. An about face from those earlier Roman times.
(Dr. Donna Pinter is founder and director of Psychological Services Clinic, Bloomsburg, Danville and Sunbury. “Slice of Life” appears on this page each Sunday.)

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