Valentine’s day in the Netherlands

Valentine’s day in the Netherlands

In the Netherlands only since the nineties of the last century there is was more attention for this tradition. In England loved ones have done this since the late medieval. For the Dutch, it stayed a strange tradition for long.

From the Second World War onward prosperity increases. The flower industry noticed that around the 14th of February, they could do flourishing business with foreign clients. What can be done there is happening there, can be done here, they must have thought. To start in 1951 all inhabitants of Leeuwarden received a flyer about Saint Valentine. But there was not much response.

The flower industry however did not give up in. In the seventies there were actions in which a little publicity was scored. They gave free flowers to female members of parliament, to road service engineers, and to bus drivers in the public transport for example. Locally there was some imitation, but it never got became really popular.

When some mayor newspapers in 1990 offered their readers to post free adverts it was a bigger success. A year later about two million cards were sent on Valentine’s day. Also because of the better economical situation, the Dutch had more money to spend. Besides that, the whole era of the nineties was characterized by a growing Americanization of Dutch society.

I do not like Valentine’s day. For me it is an American tradition that is imposed on the world out of commercial reasons. In my youth, the eighties, nobody ever did anything about it. I knew one girl that had her birthday on the 14th of February. She said that day was some sort of celebration called Valentine’s day in America. But that’s the only reason why I knew what it was.