TheChocolateLifeLIVE – Valentine’s Day Retcon

By TheChocolateWire | a year ago | 4 min read

Original photo Karsten Winegeart / Unsplash

Episode 91 of #TheChocolateLifeLIVE streams Friday, February 17th from 12:00~13:00.

Retroactive continuity, retcon for short, is, according to Wikipedia, “a literary device in which facts in the world of a fictional work which have been established through the narrative itself are adjusted, ignored, supplemented, or contradicted by a subsequently published work which recontextualizes or breaks continuity with the former.”

While retconning is perhaps most closely associated with sci-fi / fantasy / YA novels and films and American politics, the modern-day Valentine’s Day is a Hallmark holiday reboot/retcon. If there were ever a more successful retcon machine than is Hallmark, as evidenced by the relentless torrent of cards and movies it spews, I am unaware if it.

And all of that output has a single goal: to tug at the heartstrings with enough force to persuade millions to part with billions in hard-earned (for some of us; for others, ill-gotten) valuta.

Too cynical? That’s part of what I’ll be covering in this episode of TheChocolateLifeLIVE: the actual origins of the holiday, how Victorians viewed it, its mid-20th reboot, and the incentive to rampant consumerism – some it chocolate, much of that chocolate seriously awful – that it has become today.

Resources

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Victorian-Era 'Vinegar' Valentines Could Be Mean and Hostile
Rather than expressing love and affection, these cards were designed to offend.

History Channel

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The History Channel tried to write about the history of chocolate on Valentine’s Day ... and faceplanted. Cadbury did not perfect extracting cocoa butter and it is the Fry family that first added this butter into their chocolate recipes. The Smithsonian also credits Cadbury for perfecting the extraction of cocoa butter and ignoring the contributions of Van Houten and Fry families.

Hallmark began producing its own Valentine’s Day cards in 1916 (*during* the 1st World War.)

More detailed spending statistics than the original source.

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Hashtags

#valentines #valentinesday #bemyvalentine
#chocolate #cacao #cocoa #cacau
#TheChocolateLife #LaVidaCocoa

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