In the Cards: Do You Have Valentine’s Mailbox Glut?

So, are you the type to obsess over finding just the right card for your sweetie on Valentine’s Day? Or, do you wait until the day before and hope something good is left on the rack at the drug store?

Most folks fall into the latter category. According to Hallmark, most cards are purchased in the six days prior to the holiday. Expect long lines if you’re a last minute shopper: The greeting card company—which offers more than 2,000 different Valentine’s designs—says half of the U.S. population buys cards for the holiday.

Indeed, Valentine’s Day is the second largest holiday for giving greeting cards, following Christmas. Hallmark estimates that approximately 188 million cards are exchanged to celebrate Feb. 14, not including those little cards school children buy in packs to exchange at school.

And the card mania doesn’t stop there. According to the Greeting Card Association (GSA), 90% of all U.S. households purchase at least one card annually, on average buying 30 cards a year. The average person receives more than 20 cards each year. Overall, Americans purchase nearly 7 billion greeting cards every year, generating $7.5 billion in retail sales.

Women buy more than 80% of all greeting cards, according to the GCA. This doesn’t surprise me. The only cards my better half buys are for me—I represent the household when it comes to birthdays, holidays and the like.

I have to admit, I used to be one of those people who would search for the perfect card, remembering to start looking weeks in advance. Now, I’m lucky if I remember to buy a card the day before an event. I almost wince when I open my mailbox and find a stack of birthday cards, because I know 95% of them are from people whose birthdays I forgot to commemorate earlier in the year.

But thanks to all the hearts in the stores right after Christmas, Valentine’s Day is hard to forget. According to the GSA, the first Valentine is believed to have been sent in 270 A.D. by St. Valentine on the eve of his execution for refusing to renounce Christianity. The card wasn’t a lovey-dovey affair. Rather, it was a note of appreciation to his jailer’s blind daughter for bringing him food and delivering messages during his incarceration. The note was simply signed “From Your Valentine.”

Today, you couldn’t get away with anything that simple, even if you were locked up. (I’m sure Martha Stewart upped the ante for that situation.) To see what was on the shelves for Valentine’s Day 2007, I made my card expedition early this year.

My first stop was a Hallmark Gold Crown store. I have two small sons, so cards with cartoon characters are their forte. I find two options: a musical Thomas the Tank Engine card and another with a Tigger inside that pops out on a spring.

Next are cards for the kids grandparents. My mom gets Mickey Mouse and the in-laws get penguins, ’cause they’re so trendy. (Penguins that is, not the in-laws. They’re kind of traditional folks. And waddle less.)

Mickey is again the winner for our card to the in-laws, but I find myself stumped for my mom. I find myself slipping into sugar shock when I read sappy flowery cards, and that’s just about all there is for mothers. She’ll think I was abducted by a cult if I send her one of these.

I could send her an e-card, but she doesn’t have a computer. I could make her a card, but I can’t find my purple crayon. I keep looking and find a simple card that I like.

A glittery card with a silly poem is a winner for the kids to give their dad (“Kids can be squirrelly, acorns are crunchy, our dad is tree-mendous, we love him a bunchy!”), but I come up dry when it comes to finding my card for the hubby.

My next card buying destination? Target, because as one friend recently said, “Target has everything.”

Bingo! I find what I’m looking for. I won’t say what the card is, as hubby occasionally reads this newsletter, but if you saw it and knew us, you’d say “yeah, that’s about right.”

Here’s hoping you get a wonderful Valentine from your loved one, and that you’re not receiving it from behind bars. And if you are behind bars, here’s hoping they’re decorated with something fab from Martha Stewarts’ Incarceration Collection, coming soon, I’m sure, from K-Mart.