valentine's day rant

This is my Valentine's Day Rant. If you are just here for the crafty stuff,
then skip down to the next post.

Okay, when did Valentine's Day turn into the next Halloween? (And don't get me started on Easter; I'll talk about that in a few months.) When I was a kid I went to public school, just like my kids do. When I was a little older, like third grade, my mom would buy me the box of valentines from the store that I wanted and I would sign them, put them in their envelopes, and address them to the kids in my class all by myself. Some years they might have had a cartoon character on them that I liked, but some years they were just cute valentines, not connected to any particular TV show or movie. On Valentine's Day we would have a party and pass out our valentines. Everyone got one, to be fair. It wasn't like Charlie Brown or anything at my school. Anyway, my teacher would let us open all of our valentines at our desk. I would lay mine out and open and look at EVERY one. Some little white envelopes would be bulging, and I knew that a few tiny conversation hearts would be shoved in there. And of course I would eventually eat every one of those hearts, even the ones that tasted kind of yucky. It was still candy. Usually one person would give out a fancier version with a red heart sucker taped to a valentine. Those were always cool. But every year it seemed like one wonderful person had carefully tucked a stick of gum in it's perfect silver wrapping in with their valentine. (What, were they rich or something?) It was usually "mystery" gum since the paper wrapper wasn't on it. It could be Big Red or it could be Juicy Fruit. I'd even take the less desirable Spearmint. It was gum for crying out loud! How often do you get that at school? Or at home with 5 other siblings fighting for it?

Oh, how times have changed. Now my kids come home from school with a bag or box full of valentines--the teachers don't let the kids open them at school anymore and I don't blame them--and they dump the whole thing onto the living room floor to sort out. Hhhmm, reminds me of another holiday, except then my kids are dressed in costumes. They sift through the valentines, only looking for the candy. And now it isn't just a few conversation hearts, it's a whole box. And it's not just one stick of gum, it's a whole pack. I usually try to be helpful and say things like, "Look, here is a valentine from your friend Billy" or "This one's cute, did you see it?" But kids don't look at the actual valentines anymore, at least mine don't, only what came with it. When we first started talking about valentines for school a few weeks ago, the first words out of my seven year old's mouth were, "What candy are we going to get? I remember last year we bought..." And as a parent, I don't want my kids to be the lame ones who would dare to only have just a plain old valentine, nothing else included. This year I bought two candies that my three kids who are in school could choose from: organic suckers or tiny boxes of all natural gum. Neither contain any artificial colors or flavors and they are both allergy-free (no dairy, eggs, gluten, soy, wheat, tree nuts, peanuts, etc.). No, these aren't manufactured by big name candy companies; you probably haven't even heard of these brands. To go with the candy my sister and I punched out paper hearts from leftover scrapbooking paper scraps at her house instead of using store bought valentines. I guess it's my small way of trying to push back against the comercialism of another holiday, although I may not be doing that great of a job. And I know, the pencils or erasers or stickers that some people give out are cute. We have a whole drawer full. And that is a great idea. This is not my point. When did Valentine's Day turn into the next Halloween?

These are the gum valentines. The writing is on the other side. I just used gum, a heart, and some double sided tape. These are the sucker valentines. This looks like I said, " I love hole-punchers." But I don't.