For nearly 100 years, a Valentine’s Day card usually meant that someone was about to poke fun at you. While today, the cards decorated with hearts and cutesy messages tend to be sentimental and sweet it wasn’t always so.
“This (sour) pickle, which you plainly see, is your affinity” reads one such deprecating card. “And yet, poor thing! We tell you true, it’s very sweet, compared to you.”
In the Feb. 13, 1881, issue of The Cheyenne Daily Sun, it was declared that Valentine’s Day is a time when people could share their feelings anonymously through the mail.
And those weren’t always warm and fuzzy feelings.
People who hated someone would send a horrid caricature with the idea of touching that person on a sore spot and making them wince. One such example is a hand-colored Valentine’s Day card advising the recipient not to wear a low-cut dress in public because she’s “too skinny.”
Though not as common, there are still a few people today that use Valentine’s Day as an opportunity to send their enemies a gift reflecting their feelings, said Jerry Kintzler, owner of Jerry’s Flowers in Riverton, Wyoming.
“We've had people come in and order flowers that they then want sprayed black because they had not gotten along too well or something like that,” Kintzler said. “But most of our customers are buying sentimental gifts that are romantic and can be more extravagant.”
Romantics To Comics
These more sentimental valentines were also sent out anonymously in the early days of Wyoming. They were the ones who were “badly gone” on somebody and afraid to say so; the romantics who sent “love-breathing, lace paper-covered and decalcomania-decorative missives, hoping to touch a tender spot with them,” the newspaper reported.
The romantics avoided like the plague the funny, sarcastic cards that would send the wrong message to their anonymous love.
However, most people were sending valentines just for fun, although almost always, as was the trend of the day, anonymously.
Kintzler said that there are people who want to make their valentines day gifts fun and get creative. The trend today is go beyond just a mere funny card. In his 50 years of business, he has seen people get more extravagant and over-the-top with their gifts.
“They'll put novelty stuff that they bring in and want them put in the bouquet,” he said. “It used to be minimal, but now they're generous with their gifts.”
These fun cards that were so popular in the early part of the century, according to the Cheyenne Daily Sun, were the best and most innocent to send and receive. They opined that if the valentine business was confined to that style it would a good thing.
Such as the valentine card that poked fun at the pinup gal of the day.
“Praises for yourself, you sing, and hold your head aloft,” the Valentine’s Day card reads. “Your praise is full of hooey and you’re full of applesauce!”
Valentine’s Day Explodes
The city of Cheyenne was founded in 1867, and by 1881 was the bustling metropolis of Wyoming.
The people of this young city saw themselves as hip as their rivals in New York City and were not to be outdone in style or fashion of the day, including with the growing fad of sending what they considered funny Valentine’s Day cards.
A.J. Fisher of New York who, with his father, has been one of the largest dealers in valentines since 1834, told the Cheyenne Daily Sun that demand that year had grown to record numbers. Although Cheyenne could not compete with the 3million comic valentines sold that year by Fisher, crowds of customers “besieged” the counters of local stores for the 5-cent cards.
“The result will show itself tomorrow, and he who isn’t important enough to have one of these missives of love, spite or fun sent to him, must certainly be very retiring,” the Sun wrote.
The business of valentines was increasing every year in Wyoming’s frontier city. The cards were of a greater artistic finish for the higher-priced valentines and the excruciating humor just kept getting funnier in the comical cards according to the reporter of the 1881 article.
The cards could be very targeted to your chosen audience such as the one that made fun of boarding food and would have been sent to the mistress of the house.
“Poor victims!” the sender would complain, most likely referring to themselves. “With what grim determination they will have to face their meal, and how they will be longing that their jaws were made of steel!”
Most of the cards sold were made in America by the likes of comics Charles J. Howard and Hugh Chenowith.
Although beautiful, the high-priced English valentines did not suit the American taste who wanted to laugh and poke fun at their friends. For the most part, they were just were not as sentimental as their counterparts across the ocean.
Tastes have changed for today’s valentine day cards are mostly sentimental messages, even the jokes are sweet. Examples include “I love you – even when you’re hangry. Now, that’s true love.” And “Words cannot ‘espresso’ how much I love you.”
Rare is the sarcastic poem that was so common one hundred years before.
Comic Valentines were all the rage in the 1800s and early 1900s. These valentines were usually sent anonymously and could be considered spiteful. They were usually sent to either someone you hated or a friend you were making fun of. 
Comic Valentines were all the rage in the 1800s and early 1900s. These valentines were usually sent anonymously and could be considered spiteful. They were usually sent to either someone you hated or a friend you were making fun of. 
Comic Valentines were all the rage in the 1800s and early 1900s. These valentines were usually sent anonymously and could be considered spiteful. They were usually sent to either someone you hated or a friend you were making fun of. 
Comic Valentines were all the rage in the 1800s and early 1900s. These valentines were usually sent anonymously and could be considered spiteful. They were usually sent to either someone you hated or a friend you were making fun of.
Anonymous Fun
Although there were cameo valentines and gifts such as jewelry boxes that were the popular gifts of youthful gallants, most of the valentines sold in Cheyenne in the late 1800s and into the 1920s were the comical digs at your friends.
The “Mastodon” comic valentines were especially selling well on the Wyoming frontier and hit the popular fancy because of their giant size which made their satire all the more impressive.
The New York merchant Fisher reminded Cheyenne readers that it was important to keep the cards anonymous.
He had himself learned this lesson when he sold a comic valentine with his own name on it the year before. The gentleman who bought it sent it to a friend in Richmond, Virginia, which bore the printed name of “Mr. Fisher.”
Fisher soon received a furious letter from the recipient, stating that, “When you send an anonymous valentine to me again, don’t be such a fool as to leave your name on it!”
Now 144 years later, the sentiments in these Valentine cards might still ring true, but you also might want to remain anonymous when you send out the card, especially if it was the Valentine’s Day card that pokes fun at a female driver.
“No road is ever wide enough, you twist and twist again,” the card says. “The folks behind you have to guess which way you’ll turn and when.”
Of course, she could have responded with another Valentine’s Day card to the carpenter in her life with, “A real ‘skilled workman’ you must be to ‘work’ your job so endlessly, for each day, almost without fail you work eight hours and drive one nail.”
Today if you want a funny valentine, the card you find at your local Hallmark won’t be about “You’ll never be a movie queen, nor act on any stage. But if you simply got to act, Act Your Age!”
Instead, the most insulting message you would find include “You are annoying, but I love you” or “I like you and naps.”
As Kintzler said that, “Today, Valentine’s Day is for the sentimental.”
Even if you are being sentimental about naps.
Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com.
