It seems like there’s a day and a month designated to just about every cause, awareness, and activity out there. This month, we honor the handmade with National Handmade Day, which is celebrated each year on the first Saturday in April. So grab your glitter and yarn, roll up your sleeves, and get ready to create.

National Handmade Day is a time to honor the tradition of making unique, one-of-a-kind items with both your hands and your heart. Whether it’s toys, soaps, pottery, jewelry, baked goods, or woodworks, they are material expressions of an artist’s talents, made to bring a smile to the faces of family members, friends, or customers. These handmade products could be the continuation of a family tradition or a hobby you just decide to adopt on your own. Either way, they’re completely unique, creative items you’ve brought to life with the utmost care.

National Handmade Day was first celebrated in 2018, so the observance is still pretty new. The practice of creating goods by hand, however, has been practiced by our ancestors for millennia. In the centuries before the birth of Christ, potters and metalworkers in Greece created ceramics and items in bronze, each of them signed by their maker.

In the Medieval era in Europe, guilds formed, bringing these artisans together, everyone from weavers to carpenters. These guilds were founded to regulate prices and quality of product. During these years, crafters made making and selling their creations their entire livelihood.

Everything changed during the Industrial Revolution. Between the late 18th and early 20th centuries, inventions such as the power loom led to factories opening and the shuttering of smaller craft stores. Machines – and with them, the ability to produce a greater number of items in a shorter time span — threatened the livelihood of artisans whose income was dependent on sales of their one-of-a-kind items.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, however, figures such as American craftsman and furniture maker Gustav Stickley promoted the benefits and quality of handmade pieces over mass-produced goods, joining a movement designed to breathe new energy into handmade creations and to lessen the power given to machinery and automation (today, of course, authorized dealers of Stickley furniture can now be found across the U.S.).

Before we get into the history of Coca-Cola collectibles in this month’s issue, let’s address the elephant in the room – or, in this case, the adorable, anthropomorphic, digitally-created, white polar bear mascot in the room.

Growing up, the rumor that Coca-Cola originally contained cocaine made schoolchildren giggle and titter with surprise. It felt like a fun, naughty little secret, and now we were in on it. When you consider it, the tale kind of makes sense. How else were our parents and grandparents supposed to walk that five miles to school each day, uphill, in a foot of snow? Surely they had to have help in the form of a little liquid pep.

A July 25, 2021, article in USA Today reports that Coca-Cola’s original recipe included extract from the coca leaf, the plant from which cocaine is derived. The National Institute on Drug Abuse confirms that the beverage was originally marketed as medicine; at the time Coca-Cola was invented in 1886, cocaine was legal and could be found in many drugstore remedies. But from the beginning, the makers of Coca-Cola faced a quandary. If they admitted the beverage contained cocaine, they would be sharing the truth.

“The implication would be that they had removed it because it was harmful, which might even open the door to lawsuits. Besides, it was unthinkable to admit that Coca-Cola had ever been anything but pure and wholesome,” author Mark Pendergrast writes in “For God, Country and Coca-Cola.”

The company finally removed cocaine from the recipe at the dawn of the 20th century.

Today, we have no way of knowing how much cocaine the iconic beverage contained, though more liberal estimates place the amount at a staggering 3.5 grams.

Regardless, the “cocaine in Coca-Cola” issue remains one of those fun little topics of conversation that both shock and delight us. Next time you raise a glass or a can to your lips, give a moment of silent thanks to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for its tireless oversight.

Pepsi’s ties to Old Hollywood

Even though I identify as a rabid Diet Coke fan, I suppose it’s only appropriate to share another fizzy factoid about rival Pepsi, the other party in the cola wars.

If you’re a Generation Xer, you’ll remember the 1984 Pepsi commercial snafu in which our very own “Voice of a New Generation,” King of Pop Michael Jackson, accidentally had his hair set on fire due to faulty pyrotechnics. But Baby Boomers and older will recall another famous face at the top of the company – none other than Hollywood Golden Age film star Joan Crawford, who was married to PepsiCo. President Alfred Steele from 1955 until his death in 1959. Following the sudden death of her fourth husband, Crawford was elected as PepsiCo’s first female member of the company’s board of directors and later was named the company’s goodwill ambassador. She retired from the board in 1973.

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.