With February 14th just around the corner, love is in the air…literally…as Valentine’s Day cards jam mailboxes around the world. According to the Greeting Card Association, 25% of all seasonal cards sent each year in America are Valentine’s, making it the second most popular card-sending occasion in the Unites States
 
Valentine’s Day originated in 5th Century Rome as a tribute to St. Valentine, a Catholic bishop. February 14th evolved into a holiday for lovers over time, and Charles, duke of Orleans, sent the first true Valentine card in 1415. The recipient: his wife. (He was imprisoned in the Tower of London at the time.) 

Colonists brought the European tradition to American, but the stateside love affair with mailing hearts-and-flowers sentiments didn’t really get under way until the mid-19th Century. The reason: it was a good deal.
 
Exasperated after a generation of spoils system incompetence and on the heels of a U.S. Postal Commission Report, Congress ordered a massive review of the Post Office and passed comprehensive reform legislation in 1845 to overhaul procedures. The legislators voted in a drop in rates and when February 14th rolled around, the penny-wise cost of sending a card set off what contemporaries of the time described as “Valentine mania.”
 
People sent cards to numerous objects of their affection, often taking advantage of the possibilities for anonymity that the mail provided. That was alarming to moralists who complained that the postal system, in general, “promoted promiscuity, illicit assignations, and the distribution of pornography.”
 
And actually, they weren’t entirely wrong about any of that!
 
The Valentine’s Day tradition really took hold during the Civil War years, 1861-1865, when cards often depicted sweethearts parting, or a tent with flaps that opened to reveal a soldier. (These popular cards were known as “windows.”)
 
By the time the craze tapered off a few decades later, people were sending each other cards for Christmas, Easter, and on their birthdays, as the holiday greeting cards became a fixture of American postal history
 

A decade later, Americans were buying and sending three million ready-made valentines. Today, approximately 190 million Valentine’s Day cards are exchanged each year.