By JoAnn Biren
Murray County News Staffwriter
Ah, Valentine’s Day! You can’t miss this day unless you avoid newspapers, listening to the radio or watching television. You would have to skip shopping, groceries included, because stores are full of red, white and pink colors on display with a myriad of gift giving ideas for the holiday that falls on February 14.
Everyone has a memory of that first Valentine, usually homemade and most certainly in grade school. Remember the shoe boxes decorated with paper hearts? The anticipation alone, leading up to the party itself, was probably the most fun part of the entire experience. For some anyway.
Sending a card to someone special, and the word special here covers a lot of ground, from former neighbors to parents and grandparents and long-time friends. Do you have any idea how many cards are sent out each year to celebrate Valentine’s Day? The Greeting Card Association did the work and came up with 145 million. Writing it out with all the zeros looks even more impressive, 145,000,000 valentine cards in the United States which means they didn’t count other countries. And, there was a footnote; they didn’t count all those valentines in the decorated boxes in elementary classrooms all across this great country. Oh my! That’s a lot of paper.
Valentine’s Day didn’t exactly start out all kissing and gifting. It was actually a Roman feast where men sacrificed a dog and a goat. They skinned the animals and used the skins to whip the women thinking this would make them fertile. Boy, have we come a long way. Or, have we?
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