Mocha With Linda hosts a weekly meme called Flashback Friday. She’ll post a question every Thursday, and then Friday we can link our answers up on her site. You can visit her site for more Flashbacks.

The prompt for today is:

What was Valentine’s Day like when you were growing up? Did you have parties at school? Did you make or buy the valentines for your classmates? Was it a trend to attach candy to each valentine? Did your family acknowledge the day in any particular way? What about as you got older, in your teens? Was the day eagerly anticipated or dreaded? Did your school sell/allow carnations or other items? Do any Valentine’s Days from the past in particular stand out in your memory? What about now – is it a special time or just another day on the calendar? And of course, the all-important question: candy conversation hearts – yes or no?!

I love Valentine’s Day.

All that I remember about family Valentine’s celebrations from childhood is that my dad would buy those heart-shaped boxes of candy, and big one for my mom and smaller ones for us kids. Though I am not a big fan of the variety-box chocolates these days, I look on those a little nostalgically when I start to see them in stores each year. I don’t remember that we exchanged cards as a family or had special dinners.

I loved Valentine’s Day at school. We always decorated little boxes or bags to hold the Valentine’s we received. I searched for just the right Valentines and then carefully chose each one for each classmate…especially the boys. It seems like we could bring them in at any point during the week, because I can remember the eagerness of checking our boxes all through the week. We had a little party during the afternoon of Valentine’s Day and opened all our treasures…trying to guess if there was special meaning in the ones from the boys.

I don’t remember if it was a requirement every year, but I do remember one year our fourth grade teacher saying that if we were going to participate, we had to give a Valentine to every member of the class so no one would feel left out. One boy argued with her that that wasn’t…fair or genuine or something. That boy happened to be George K., whom I had a grand crush on…along with almost every other girl in class. And I was profoundly disappointed that I did not receive a Valentine from him — until he came up behind me and whispered something in my ear during the party. The only problem was I couldn’t understand what he said before he moved away. I fantasized that it was something along the lines of how I was more special in his eyes than the other girls, so he wanted to tell me how he felt rather than send me a paltry paper Valentine. But what he probably said was, “Will you stop staring at me, you freak?”

Can you tell I was a little too boy-crazy in my youth?

Ahem. 😳

I don’t remember there being any kind of acknowledgment of Valentine’s Day in high school. In college, one year the campus snack shop offered a special steak dinner for two during Valentine’s in a specially decorated side room, and the campus newspaper published some of the faculty members’ love stories — always enjoyed that.

With my own children, a lot of Valentines came with candy, though I don’t think we ever sent any like that. It was always a challenge to find Valentines that boys wanted to send, especially in the upper elementary years, but I can remember finding some for Jesse one year with a vehicle theme and another year with an Army and camouflage theme, so that was fun. With my older boys’ I seem to remember their Valentine’s receptacles just being a decorated paper bag at the request of teachers, but with my youngest at a different school, they had classroom contests for their Valentine’s boxes. I always liked trying to come up with something a little different, and there was a children’s magazine in stores that had great ideas (I don’t remember the name, but it was connected with Boy and Girl Scouts. My kids weren’t Scouts, and that was the only time of year I ever even noticed the magazine.) One year we did a space ship, another year a crocodile — I’d love to show pictures, but those are in boxes of photos taken after the last ones I put in albums and before digital cameras and I don’t want to search for them right now. 🙂 I think he did win the contest with the crocodile.

When they were in high school, the seniors would sell various things on Valentine’s Day to help make money for their senior trip, from “singing Valentine’s” one year to decorated balloons or cookies or some other treat.

It wasn’t until my oldest was in college that I heard the acronym S.A.D. in connection with the day — Single Awareness Day.

As a family, we usually have a special dinner that night finished with some heart-shaped cupcakes. Sometimes it has been a specially Valentine-themed dinner, like this Crescent Heart-Topped Lasagna Casserole. I don’t do tablecloths every day, but Valentine’s is one day I use them.

I get cards for the kids and Jim, and he gets a card for me. The kids used to give us cards from the ones they used for school, but they haven’t given cards in recent years, except that Jason and Mittu have since they’ve been dating and then married.

I also like to set out a few little Valentine decorations:

Linda’s post reminded me that one year I made a Valentine Scavenger hunt — I made heart shapes and cut them in half and wrote clues on them — the clue on one led to the other half which led to another clue, etc. I don’t remember what the prize at the end was — Valentine’s candy, I think. The boys asked for that again the next year, but I had a hard enough time coming up with clues the first time. Then another year I made a big poster board Valentine with candy taped on at appropriate places in the message (like, “You make me feel like $100,000 Grand” with the candy bar in place of the words.)

For a couple of years I hosted our ladies’ group’s refreshments in February, one of my favorite times to do it. One year I made these Sweetheart Jamwiches from Southern Living magazine.:

And Peanut Butter Kiss cookies, only substituting chocolate hearts instead of Hershey’s kisses.

Mocha With Linda hosts a weekly meme called Flashback Friday. She’ll post a question every Thursday, and then Friday we can link our answers up on her site. You can visit her site for more Flashbacks.

How did your family celebrate New Year’s when you were growing up? Was staying up on New Year’s Eve a big deal? Was it a date night for your parents or was it a family occasion? Did your family have any particular traditions for New Year’s? Were resolutions emphasized? Did you do fireworks? Watch parades or bowl games? Were there church activities you attended? Did Christmas activities extend into the new year? Was the Epiphany a focus?

We never had a set tradition or routine for New Year’s Eve. Sometimes my parents went out, I think sometimes we got together with other people, most times we stayed home. We did get to stay up late, and I think we watched the ball drop in Times Square on TV. We did fireworks sometimes.

My dad probably watched football on most New Year’s Days, and I think maybe the kids watched parts of the parades in the morning. We did have black-eyes peas for dinner, supposedly for luck, though I don’t know what they were supposed to have to do with luck. 🙂 Resolutions were not a big deal, though I tried to make some for several years — it was more just a day to relax before school and work started back up.

When I started going to church as a teen-ager, my church often showed a film on New Year’s Eve and I think had some kind of refreshments afterward. I liked that then, but when another church did that when I was older, a middle-aged mom, I dozed through most of the film and was very cranky afterward. 😳 In subsequent years they played group games, and that made it much easier to stay awake and alert.

The church we attended for the last twelve years had a New Year’s Eve service, but not all the way until midnight: our pastor wanted us to be able to be home before the roads got unsafe with drink-impaired drivers. We usually lived in an area that did not allow fireworks, but last year Jason and Mittu lived outside the city limits, so we took a bunch of fireworks out there and made munchies and had a nice time. We haven’t talked about any plans this year yet. If we’re home we do usually watch the ball drop in Times Square on TV — there is just something about that moment that’s really neat. I remember the year of Y2K as they showed New Year’s celebrations in different countries, being relieved that so far none of the other countries had any problems as the clock turned to 12:00 a.m. and hoped that bode well for us, too.

We do usually take down the Christmas decorations around that time. Sometimes we shop. We don’t watch football and we don’t have black-eyed peas (I like them but my family doesn’t). 🙂 We have never attended a church that celebrated Epiphany, though some pastors mentioned it and they did note that the wise men came some time after Jesus was born (maybe as much as two years) and not while they family was still in the stable in Bethlehem.

So, though New Year’s Eve and Day are probably some of our most nontraditional holidays, I enjoy them as a last bit of vacation before the routine starts back up again.