Will You be my Valentine?
Posted by Darcy | 0 comments
On Valentine’s Day and the weeks leading up to it, we are bombarded with red hearts, little sugar conversation candies, chubby cupids posed to shoot an arrow, and packages of little white doilies. Boxes of punch-out Valentine’s cards are available with everything from adorable kittens to Hannah Montana with quip-y one liners, like “You’re the tweet-est!” And while I’m not usually one to get wrapped up in the commercialism of these sometimes-deemed “Hallmark Holidays”, I can’t help but think the theory behind this one is a good one.
At its very root, Valentine’s Day is wonderful. Perhaps it’s now only a show pony of a once-noble steed, but pull back the layers of this festa d’amore and you’ll find a whole lot to respect about this oft-underwhelming holiday of love.
I put my Geek Skills to use and I dug up some dirt on this Saint Valentine, so we can learn a little more about him:
- Legend says St. Valentine was a priest in 3rd century Rome around the time of Emperor Claudius II. When Claudius decided that unmarried men make more willing soldiers, he soon made it illegal for young men to marry. Claudius sent a decree canceling all engagements and marriages of military-aged men.
- Valentine knew that no emperor could stop love, and continued marrying these young men to their loved ones in secret. Legend said Valentine was discovered and sent to prison.
- Some legends say he fell in love with the jailer’s daughter, and before he died sent her a letter declaring his love, signed “From Your Valentine”. This phrase is still used today or spun to ask, “Will you be my Valentine?”
- It is believed that in a pagan Roman fertility custom, marriages were arranged via lottery at the start of the bird-mating season. During this coupling ceremony, names of eligible maidens were drawn and the person to whom you were paired was worn on your sleeve. The saying “wear my heart on my sleeve” comes from this lottery system. Because this mating ritual was deemed “un-Christian-like”, the church replaced the pagan holiday with traditions of a Christian holiday. They substituted the Feast of Saint Valentine and its expressions of love to remove the pagan significance of the day but retain the celebration.
- Pope Gelasius declared St. Valentine would be celebrated each February 14th sometime around 496 A.D. St. Valentine became the patron saint of lovers.
- Saint Valentine may actually be the combined stories of several ancient priests, all sharing the same name. When, in 1969, the Roman Catholic Church removed all the feast
days of saints with unproven histories, Saint Valentine’s Day was one of those casualties. Thus, Valentine’s Day is now only an echo of the legend of a man who sacrificed his life for love.
- Cupid comes from the Latin, cupido. It means desire. In mythology, Cupid is the son of Venus, the goddess of love.
- Esther Howland, a woman from Worcester, Massachusettes, is believed to have made the first commercial Valentine’s cards in the US during the 1840s using scraps: bit of colored paper, lace and ephemera.
- The National Greeting Card Association says Valentine’s Day is one of the largest card-sending holidays world wide, second only behind Christmas. According to them, 1 billion Valentine’s cards are sent each year – overwhelmingly purchased by women.
So while anything can be spun and marketed commercially, I can’t help but appreciate the reason underneath it all – a crazy little thing called Love.
Darcy is the mom to three boys ages 8, 7, and 5 and blogs over at Life with My 3 Boybarians. She is the owner of a blog design business at www.graphicallydesigning.com. She and Handy Man live in Iowa…nowhere near a Starbucks.
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