By Madison Butkus
Hometown Weekly Reporter
With Valentine’s Day just briefly behind us, the Medfield Council on Aging (COA) hosted Historian Anthony Sammarco to talk about Valentine’s Day Traditions throughout the earliest years in Boston, MA. Seniors gathered at The Center at Medfield to enjoy this fascinating presentation.
Sammarco, a history professor, has written 85 books and is currently working on three new ones. All of his works center around different locations, time periods, and holiday histories throughout Boston. For this presentation, he discussed his findings for his book published in 2022,
Valentine’s Day Traditions in Boston.
Sammarco began his presentation talking about the creation of Valentine’s Day, starting with Saint Valentine himself. From there, he went into the traditions of this loving day, including the creation of Valentine’s Day cards.
Sammarco stated that the first commercial valentines in the United States were created in the mid-nineteenth century by a woman born in Worcester, Massachusetts, Esther Allen Howland. “Esther Howland was an artist and businesswoman,” Sammarco stated, “who popularized Valentine’s Day greeting cards in America. After graduating from Mount Holyoke College in 1847, she made the first American commercial valentines in New England using paper lace and other special materials to make her own, and no two were ever quite the same.”
With her growing talent quickly gaining popularity, Howland expanded the business, bringing on an array of talented and educated women to help her create cards. Howland and her team went on to design blank Valentine’s Day cards as well, in which some consumers were unsure of what to write in them. “For those who could not or would not try to compose a personal Valentine’s Day wish,” Sammarco stated, “Howland published a small thirty-one page booklet that took the worry out of being too sentimental or overly effusive. In her small pocket-sized book, The Sentimental Valentine Writer for Ladies and Gentleman, Howland created a veritable cheat sheet that gave tongue-tied lovers appropriate phrases they could copy with which to woo their love interests.”
Samarrco additionally discussed other types of Valentine’s Day cards and their contributing artists. Among the most outré cards included the Sailor’s Valentines, Vinegar Valentines, and Krampus Valentines.
According to the Medfield COA’s website, “Valentine’s Day Traditions in Boston is a fun and interesting way to recall the holiday from the exchange of Valentine's cards in a day school to the cards, candy, and flowers we sent or received as adults to and from our valentine. From Ancient Rome with the pagan festival of Lupercalia to the worldwide celebration of the holiday, we revel in its history and evolution through the centuries as a day of love.”
