During one of our stops on the long drive back from Sevilla, we played cards to keep ourselves occupied. I never really gave it much thought before, but tonight I realized that I had no real idea what the significance of the symbols, or suits, on each card is. I also thought it was going to be a straightforward answer, but it turns out that there is a long history to cards and suits and even today a lot of countries have different suits. We use the basic French traditional deck in which the four suits represent the four classes. Specifically, the spades signify the nobility, the hearts- the clergy, diamonds- merchants, and clubs- peasants. In Spain people still play with a different deck of cards where the hearts are cups, the diamonds are coins, the clubs are actual clubs (like a bludgeon), and spades are swords.
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