The Disappearing Saint

Scott Hardie | January 12, 2012
Is it my imagination, or was February 14 more commonly called "St. Valentine's Day" a few decades ago, and now it's more commonly just "Valentines Day"?

I'm hardly one to remember well. As a child in the eighties, my valentines tended to take the form of cheap tiny cards showing GI JOE offering some manly yet affectionate greeting while holding an AK-47 and standing inside of a big red heart. Those were kind of surreal.

If the change did happen, maybe it has to do with our Tweeting, texting, abbreviation-happy modern culture. We can't be bothered to spell the apostrophe, let alone the Saint.

Erik Bates | January 12, 2012
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Steve West | January 12, 2012
Hallmark has transformed the "holiday" into something it was not originally intended to celebrate. I don't honor Saint Valentine on that day so I purposely refer to the day as Valentine's day to honor my wife instead.

Scott Hardie | January 13, 2012
On hallmark.com, it's spelled as Valentine's Day, with an apostrophe but no saint. I wonder if they have an internal style manual dictating this with such specificity.