Here at Discover Vintage America, we’ve covered the history of Valentine’s Day, the history of Valentine’s Day cards, and even the story of how those chalk-like candy conversation hearts became synonymous with the holiday. But let’s be honest – the real star of the show every Valentine’s Day is chocolate!

One box for sweets…

Although Valentine’s Day was first observed as a romantic holiday in the late 14th century, chocolate was scarce in Europe, and, like so many of our modern-day holiday traditions, it wouldn’t be associated with the holiday until the Victorian Era. That was when a little English company called Cadbury stepped up its chocolate-making game. It improved the taste of chocolate by extracting pure cocoa butter from the cocoa bean, making it sweeter, more palatable, – and much more popular.

Demand for Cadbury’s chocolate increased, and it’s said that Richard Cadbury first had the idea of decorating heart-shaped boxes with images of hearts and Cupid and filled them with chocolates and truffles.

Though he never patented the design, the heart-shaped, chocolate-filled boxes soon became a Valentine’s Day staple. In fact, he marketed the boxes as not only being an ideal gift for your sweetheart; the boxes also could be used to store trinkets from the holiday, including love letters and even locks of hair.

According to History.com, the boxes became more elaborate until World War II, when production was greatly decreased due to the rationing of sugar. Many original Victorian Era candy boxes still exist, however, and are sold on online auction sites, some for as little as $20 and others for more than $100 if in excellent condition.

…And another for salutations

Getting chocolate on Valentine’s Day at any age is a delight, but you might remember the excitement that surrounded holiday parties in elementary school.

Usually, you’d put your textbooks away during the last couple hours of the school day, chow down on sugary sweets and play games related to the holiday. But the best part was decorating and displaying the cardboard box (usually a shoebox) in which you’d collect valentines from your classmates. You might have enjoyed spending the entire night before meticulously decorating your Valentine’s Day mailbox with red and pink hearts made of construction paper, stickers, and glitter.

If you’ve ever sent or received a greeting card, chances are, it was a Hallmark card.

But the Kansas City-based Hallmark Cards Inc., founded in 1910, is so much more than cards. As you’ll learn in this issue of Discover Vintage America, their Christmas ornaments and collectibles have brightened homes for more than a century. And Kansas Citians have even built cherished holiday memories at an entertainment and shopping complex that rivals Santa’s workshop in the amount of Christmas cheer it spreads.

It’s been a holiday tradition for so many of we Kansas Citians to flock to Crown Center during the holiday season. Constructed in 1968, it was originally built as an example of urban revitalization as families and businesses moved into the suburbs and away from the decay of the city, “the rutted parking lots, abandoned warehouses, the sorry remains of failed or failing businesses, and a limestone hill cluttered with signs and tarpaper shacks,” according to the company’s website. Crown Center was named, of course, for Hallmark’s crown-shaped logo.

The complex also houses thousands of square feet of office space and hotel rooms, but if you’ll pardon the pun, the Crown Center Shops are its crown jewels. Opened in 1973, it boasts three levels and 300,000 square feet of retail, restaurant, and theater space. If you’ve taken your kids for a quick bite at the Crayola Café and then helped them with a craft project at Kaleidoscope, or if watched your food delivered by a little train chugging over diners’ heads at Fritz’s Railroad Restaurant, you know the magic you can find in this venue. Oh, and let’s not forget the seasonal ice skating rink, the Crown Center Ice Terrace – it’s open from November through February. There’s still plenty of time to tie on those ice skates and show off your moves.

While you’re there, by the way, snap a picture in front of the 100-foot-tall Mayor’s Christmas tree – one of the country’s tallest – which is “the centerpiece for a host of holiday activities.” Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas

Arecent issue of Discover Vintage America shone a light on neon lights – their history, their function, the way they evoke a sense of yearning for an earlier age. They’re everywhere you turn in the bevy of roadside attractions along vast stretches of Route 66. And the inventor of the neon light himself came from Paris, France – known the world over as the City of Lights, of course.

Country Club Plaza lights

Well, here in Kansas City – the “Paris of the Plains,” as we’ve been called since the early 20th century – we’re known for our lights, too. Though they’re not of the neon variety, they’re a cherished part of our city and its culture. If you’re a fellow Kansas Citian, you know I’m talking about the Country Club Plaza lights at Christmastime.

The Plaza is an historic open-air shopping center in the heart of the city, its various buildings inspired by Spanish architecture and beautiful, historic fountains sprinkled throughout (we are, after all, known as ‘the City of Fountains’ as well). Some of Kansas City’s most beloved traditions have been born on the Plaza, none more highly anticipated than the annual Plaza Lighting Ceremony. Colorful lights are strung up on just about every building within the center’s boundaries, illuminating the shops and fountains for holiday revelers all season long.

100th anniversary

In 2025, we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the first time the lights appeared on the Plaza – a single strand above the doorway of a single merchant’s building. By the time of the first Christmas lights being hung in 1925, the Plaza itself had been welcoming Kansas Citians, since 1912, when it opened. It wasn’t actually until 1930 that the lighting became an actual publicized event.

“The Plaza Lights grew in scale and became a symbol of the holiday season in Kansas City,” according to an article published on kcyesterday.com. “Each Thanksgiving, nearly 100,000 people gather to witness the illumination ceremony, now considered one of the most significant lighting displays in the country.”

There was a brief hiccup in the tradition in 1973, during America’s energy crisis. President Richard Nixon encouraged Americans to conserve energy; thus, the annual lighting ceremony was cancelled. Later, Nixon might have insisted he was no crook, but that Christmas, he couldn’t deny that he was seen as the Grinch, putting the kibosh on holiday fun for many.

This month’s issue of Discover Vintage America will help conjure up some good, old-fashioned ghouls and spirits with our lead editorial on the history of the ghost story.

Fascination with the para-normal has been around for as long as Halloween itself, and even earlier. Specifically, the spiritualism fad that swept America and Europe in the Victorian Era convinced us that the living could communicate with the dead.

In the U.S., the Spiritualist movement began in 1848 in a village in New York, when two sisters claimed that they had communicated with a ghost of a man murdered in their house many years before they moved there. Just a few years later, in 1852, an American medium named Maria Hayden visited London, conducting table seances in which she conveyed “messages” from the dead. And what séance would be complete without a little noise from an other-worldly realm? Hayden also made sure to rap her fist underneath the table for an extra eerie effect.

“Fascination with Spiritualism and psychic phenomena reached a high point in Great Britain in the late 19th century,” according to an article on victorianweb.org. “A rich diversity of people during that period shared the fascination, formed organizations to pursue the subject system-atically, and patronized a spiritualist press that served to publicize the activities of spiritualist circles around the country.”

Even Britain’s Queen Victoria was hooked on the fad, paying to have seances conducted for several decades during her long reign.

Soon, journals targeting the Spiritualist community were being published seemingly everywhere while at the same time, mediums were perfecting their craft by incorporating table tipping, automatic writing, and levi-tation, according to victorianweb.org.

Mummy dearest

Spiritualism wasn’t the only spooky fad that captured the hearts and imaginations of those living in the 19th century. Egyptomania – a fascination with all things related to ancient Egypt – especially mummies.

In the 19th century – decades before Howard Carter discovered the tomb of King Tutankhamun in 1922 – mummies weren’t viewed as artifacts to be revered and viewed in museums. No, for hundreds of years, in fact, mummies were viewed as possessing medicinal properties. Their flesh and bone often were ground up into powder and eaten to help people ingest the mummy’s powers.

When I was in elementary school in the late 1980s, a pretty girl in my class slipped me a note in the opening days of the school year.
“I really like your lunch box,” the hastily scribbled note read. This was useful information to possess, for now I knew the love for Ghostbusters that I shared with Audrey could have been the foundation of something special.

Though no young romance came of that brief, silent interaction, it makes me think of the lunch box not just as a useful tool that transports the midday meals of students and blue-collar workers alike; when you’re a kid, the type of lunch box you carried was almost a status symbol of sorts. Most of us carried metal lunch boxes bearing images from a popular TV show, film, or cartoon; today, the metal boxes have fallen out of favor, replaced by soft, insulated polyester models.

According to the Smithsonian Magazine, the lunch box’s origins can be traced to the 19th century, when working men had to protect their midday meal from the rigors of their everyday job. Smaller models would be made for the children who inevitably wanted to emulate their proud dad. The first commercially available lunchboxes in 1902 were metal and designed to look like a picnic basket.

Beloved pop culture characters began appearing on lunch boxes in the mid-1930s, with the first being the big guy himself, the face of the Disney empire – Mickey Mouse in 1935. After the invention of television and the creation of even more pop culture characters, lunch boxes – especially those manufactured by a company called Aladdin Industries — became the hot item to buy for the coming school year, festooned with icons such as The Lone Ranger, Batman, and Charlie Brown and Snoopy.

“Reaching the height of their popularity at the dawn of the television era, lunch box sales became barometers for what was hip in popular culture at any point in time,” according to the Smithsonian’s website.

The arrival of vinyl lunch boxes onto the school supply scene in the 1960s didn’t halt the ever-increasing popularity of metal versions. Metal boxes remained the standard until the 1980s, when plastic took off. The following decade, Aladdin would stop making lunch boxes, but Thermos picked up the slack.

Believe it or not, the Smithsonian itself boasts a sizable collection of vintage lunch boxes featuring characters like Barbie, Woody the Woodpecker and the Partridge Family, as well as TV shows like “Lost in Space.”