That Old Forced Love: The Valentine's Day Ritual in American Public Schools

My Mom and I were talking about Valentine's Days past and trying to puzzle out the logic of the rituals.

I am particularly fascinated by the valentine's manifestation as forced love in the American public school system.

What was your experience of this tradition? Did the school you attended practice the exchange of paper valentines?

This was only practiced in the elementary school years. Maybe it wasn't even practiced in the later elementary school years. I wonder if maybe we didn't exchange them after fourth or fifth grade. I'm honestly no longer certain. Perhaps it's stating the obvious to say the middle school and high school I attended didn't observe this custom.

I tried to remember if my friends who attended parochial school mentioned practicing this ritual, but I just can't access the memory file in my brain. I suppose that's the antediluvian period.

I do remember every child was to exchange a valentine with every other child. This meant boys gave valentines to girls and boys equally and girls also gave valentines to both sexes.

So we could see this as an exercise calculated to cultivate bisexuality in American students if we were paranoid or if we equated the valentine with sexual intent.

If you think about the ritual, it may start to seem as bizarre to you as it does to me now.

Do kids still do this? Or is it seen as a creepy and passe tradition, the way it strikes me now? I can see just by what kids this age are posting on Tumblr that the internet (and I suppose other cultural factors) have sped up young children's awareness of irony and cultural subterfuge and led them to question rituals for rituals' sake handed down to them by what they clearly often view as a dubious culture at best.

Of course, with each generation the nature of the valentine itself changes. With each generation valentines tend to look cheaper and more no-frills and the marketing of popular television shows and other cultural memes (The Simpsons, superheroes, etc.) increases almost exponentially.

But is the valentine really a romantic ritual for children? Or is it more about friendship?

I remember how agonizing it was to sign your name to a valentine meant for a kid you really didn't like or who didn't like you--or to someone with whom the kiddie hate was mutual.

Even then we realized how artificial this all was. I know I wasn't the only one. I remember Mike Leo (was this fourth grade?) protesting the valentine ritual and bruiting about how stupid he thought it all was and the teacher chiding him. And come Valentine's Day, Mikey did comply with the ritual and gave everyone a Mickey Mouse valentine. But he had drawn a Hitler mustache on every single Mickey Mouse. I nearly shat myself with laughter. The teacher nearly shat herself with something else.

So...romantic ritual?

No doubt the valentine seemed meant to fertilize a young friend's heart and there's no denying it did ape the tradition of romantic courtship seen as so vital in past centuries. I mean the courtship which occurred before you had the woman right where you wanted her (the wifey spot) and could revert to being the sexist, domineering pig that was the mold for most of yesteryear's husbands. (If you were the exception to this mold, you were probably derided as a p-whipped milquetoast--or worse--a likely cuckold.)

I'm supposing this ritual began as the nineteenth century's way of discreetly advancing the Mating Game. I suppose it was meant to ferret out "possibilites" and test the young child's "game." To see if you had a healthy little breeder and if he knew how to corral the prettiest sows. (Sorry--no disrespect to the fairer sex intended!)

And make no mistake. When kids were twelve or thirteen in the nineteenth century and this was agrarian America, they probably weren't all that far from getting married. It might have been the next summer. Now, when Americans routinely wait out their twenties before deciding if the marriage game is for them, the public school valentine ritual definitely strikes me as an anachronism. Not that romance has to lead to marriage--it can just lead to teen pregnancy and end there-- but if we take the silly messages of proferred valentine eternal love at face value, then it does seem premature prepwork.

I consider the American public school Valentine ritual as sort of the 19th century's version of MTV's The Real World.

Let's shove the kids closer and see what happens. Disaster usually. Just like on The Real World. Only alcohol is missing.

I bet Mormons just loved the Valentine ritual. Because valentines are rather polygamous by their very nature. You're being a big romantic slut. At least it's all only on paper.

I was looking for a sociological examination of the American public school valentine ritual and found this first:Kate Greenaway makes a fortune of fifteen dollars and then is shafted, and tomatoes move from the poison to food category.

I love the breakdown of valentine genres in that article.

I didn't find that sociological article I was craving and now I must away to a hot bath, so I'll share some ensorceling videos of valentines of yesteryear instead.



I love this woman's manner. "The Victorians, already known for their elaborate day core..." I wish she lived next door. My life would be a prodigy through sharing hers.







Oh God...this song makes me crazy. Now I have to go find the original since this is the muzak version. But I need to get my Dionne on.

If you don't believe in genetics, listen to Dionne sing. And then Whitney.

I heard Kristin Chenoweth's National anthem that opened a football game today. And I wanted Whitney. K.C. is a goddess and I love her on Glee and she makes terible musicals like Wicked almost good. But this was not her range or something. Is that song anybody's range? Whitney made it gorgeous. Kristin sang it as though she were an opera singer from the nineteenth century. A bad opera singer from the nineteenth century. So mannered. The performance was all nerves. She knew this song was designed to fuck her up. And it was. So it was strained and forced. She was just grateful to hit the notes and who wouldn't be grateful for that. But terrible. The difference between becoming a song's spirit (Whitney) and torturing a song so that there's only the most distant of familiarities, like meeting an alleged fourth cousin about whom you are exceedingly dubious, a person you would prefer to remain a stranger.*



Promises promises. But here I deliver.

Note the Valentiney album cover.

This is still not the version I heard in my head. Am I hallucinating? I hear this song totally different in my head. But same singer.



Oh. See. What a world of difference depending on who's sitting at that mixing board.

I went back and forth with listening to these, but it was clear from first listen I much preferred the 1969 version.

I could have just read this comment below the one video explaining, as I did just now: "Absolutely. This is the penultimate version. She sings with such clarity and style, but also warmth and real soul. And I just love the subtlety and creativity of her phrasing. Just gorgeous."

Okay, I'll admit I love the way the chorus moves on this one, but the mixing overall is terrible. Those horns are meant to be up close, surrounding that gorgeous voice and not the tinny backdrop they become when you throw them into the distance. And the muting effects render already them a little gnatlike, and "miniaturizing" them only increases that unpleasant effect.



This is a weird interpretation.

But My God. Who is this kid. That voice.

He sings about as well as George Michael. Serious.

The musician explains, "This is my version of this classic song written by Burt Bacharach. I arranged, performed and produced it myself using Logic Express 9. patr-Y-k."

Okay, even the arrangement grows on me with each re-listen. And I've listened to it about six times in a row.

The things you randomly find on YouTube some nights!



Lastly, Mika's song would make a good theme for the forced love of the Valentine's Day ritual in American public schools.





*According to the OED (2nd edition, 1989), whom is "no longer current in natural colloquial speech". Lasnik & Sobin 2000 argue that surviving occurrences of whom are not part of ordinary English grammar, but the result of extra-grammatical rules for producing "prestige" forms.