St. Valentine’s fever is exploded everywhere. All, large and small, shopping malls decorated their shop windows with hearts, cute cupids, doves and red roses. Everyone, young and old, go to buy gifts to their „valentines”.
It seems that everyone knows about “St. Valentine’s Day,” one of a few European festivals, that we all love so much. The mysterious veil of delicate holiday’s love confessions began to infatuate heads of romantics, and fulfill the air with chocolate and vanilla notes.
The history of this festival is known to all of us from school. Mysterious and dramatic, innocent and romantic story about a priest that gave gentle and unique sense to love, the most beautiful feeling. For those who still do not know, a short version of the legend. Valentine was a priest in Rome who lived during the reign of Emperor Claudius II. Claudius is said to have engaged Rome into several bloody battles. To strengthen his army, the Emperor continuously needed to recruit soldiers. However, he found that not many soldiers were keen to join the army because of attachment with their wives and families. In order to sever the bond of attachment, Claudius cancelled all marriages and engagements in Rome. Valentine – a romantic priest, defied this callous decree of Claudius by secretly arranging marriages of young men and women. When Valentine’s defiance was discovered by the Emperor, he was brutally beaten up and put to death on the February 14, about 270 AD. For his dedication for the cause, Valentine was named a Saint after his death. By Middle Ages, Saint Valentine became popular in England and France as the saint patron of love and lovers. Thus, Saint Valentine’s martyrdom day became an occasion to celebrate love. However, historians and religious scholars have questioned the reliability of these events. But we will talk about it later.
At first I will tell some interesting facts about St. Valentine’s Day to satisfy expectations of our romantics.
Everyone knows that the symbol of Valentine’s Day is a red rose. However, not everyone knows that the roots of this tradition lies in the ancient paganism. According to the legend, the goddess Aphrodite was hurried to her lover and stood on the bush of white roses, she wounded her foot and her divine blood painted them into red colour. Since that time the red roses represent love and passion.
Another symbol of this day is a heart. Long time ago, this was a pagan symbol of femininity and fertility. It is an interesting fact, that thanks to the Church, that symbol got the modern sense of “heart” as an organ of the human body. And the Church had painted the “heart” into red colour.
In some countries, on this day a woman may propose a man to marry her. If he is not ready for such an important step in his life, he should thank a woman for the honor and present her a silk dress and he must buy a silk shoe laces.
In some countries there is a tradition, a man buys clothes for unmarried woman, if she accepts a gift, it means she agrees to marry him.
In France, on St. Valentine’s Day is a tradition to give jewelry and bouquets which are chosen very carefully, according to the “language of flowers”.
In Finland, the 14th of February is called the Day of Love. The Finns present souvenirs in the shape of heart not only for their lovers, but also for their mothers, as they do not have Women’s Day.
Serious Germans believe that St. Valentine is a patron of mentally disordered and crazy people. Special masses are held there on that day. They decorate psychiatric hospital with brightly red ribbons on this day. So, if in Germany on the 14th of February, you will see a building decorated with ribbons and balloons, be sure, it is a Psychiatric Hospital.
Poles believe that this Day is the best day to visit Poznan metropolis, where according to legend, the relics of St. Valentine are buried, and his miraculous icon is above the main altar.
The first Valentine’s cards appeared in France in the fifteenth century. They were written by the young Duke Charles of Orlean, who was a prisoner in the Tower of London. He was struggling with boredom in the prison and started writing love letters to his wife. “My love to you, my sweet Valentine, has already burned me” – he wrote to his beloved wife and signed letters “Your Valentine.” There are about 60 small poems of the Duke , that are now in one of the British Museums.
But now we will talk about other side of St. Valentine’s Day. All this caramel-vanilla-chocolate madness comes to the only one thing – money.
In the early nineteenth century Valentine’s cards looked quite bulky and were made manually. Making a Valentine’s card was quite expensive in the nineteenth century. In 1840, 19-year-old Esther Howland, the daughter of publisher, persuaded her father to make a model of Valentine’s card of relatively small size to put it into mass production. I was not an easy task to convince the girl’s brother to offer such a curiosity to the visitors. Surprisingly, the result exceeded all expectations. Very quickly, those cards became very popular and the annual income from their sale reached $ 100,000.
In the beginning of the last century, there was a tradition in the USA to send marzipan to the fiancé for the St. Valentine’s Day. But marzipan contains sugar, which was very expensive then. It is known that this tradition became very popular after 1800, when beet sugar has been widely used. Americans started making caramel on their continent. Candies were made with a special greeting words that were written on them. Valentine’s candies were packed in cardboard boxes in the shape of a heart, and that had great success. Candies were made in red and white colours. Red means passion and white means the purity of love.
Now it’s time for skeptics, I’m going to tell you quite the opposite story about the holiday.
Well, let’s start with the fact that Christianity knows about eleven other saints having the name Valentine. Some Eastern Churches of the Western rite may provide still other different lists of Saint Valentines. The Roman martyrs lists only seven who died on days other than February 14: a priest from Viterbo (November 3); a bishop from Raetia who died in about 470 (January 7); a fifth-century priest and hermit (July 4); a Spanish hermit who died in about 715 (October 25); Valentine Berrio Ochoa, martyred in 1861 (November 24); and Valentine Jaunzarás Gómez, martyred in 1936 (September 18). It also lists a virgin, Saint Valentina, who was martyred in 308 (July 25) in Caesarea, Palestine.
No information about February 14th here. So what is this holiday about? What are the roots of it? Ok, I’m telling you the story….
So …. once upon a time in the ancient Roman Empire people organized a holiday on the February 14th to honor Juno – the mythological Goddess of Women and Marriage. From the following day – February 15th started the Fertility Festival called the Feast of Lupercalia. This feast was organized to protect humans from wolves and to honor the Roman Gods of Agriculture – Lupercus. It was a festival of sexual permissiveness. This celebration was noted in mid-February, when the birds began to look for a mate. During the Feast of Lupercalia, all the young women in the city placed a chit of their name in a big urn. Bachelors in the city took a chit out of the urn and became paired for the rest of the year with the girl whose name was on the chit. Quite often, the paired couple fell in love and got married. This tradition was observed in the Roman Empire for many centuries, until reaching the fourth century after Christ.
Later, when Christianity spread through Rome, the practice of finding mate through “lottery” was deemed un-Christian and outlawed. Around 498 AD, Pope Gelasius is said to have declared the February 14 as the St. Valentine’s Day. Now, instead of the names of the girls, the names of the saints were written by young boys and girls and put them in a big urn. Everyone took a chit out of the urn and had a duty all year long to follow life of the saint, which he/she pulled out.
It is obvious that the holiday that was celebrated for centuries, is very deeply rooted into the culture and not that easy to be destroyed. So, men continued to send women or girls short romantic messages. They signed the letters “from St. Valentine”, whose death coincided with this day quite accidently.
St. Valentine was canonized by the Church as a martyr who accepted Christ. In 496, Pope Gelasius I declared February 14 a commemoration day of St. Valentine. However, in 1969, in the result of reform of the worship, St. Valentine was removed from the liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church, just like some other Roman saints. It is because his life was contradictory.
The truth about the defender of love are only when it comes to the time of his living and the fact of his being a priest. It is also true, that he suffered for the faith in the times of reign of Emperor Claudius II. However, almost nothing is known about the life of Valentine. And the romantic story about the banned weddings of Roman soldiers was no more than a beautiful legend. In the times of living of St. Valentine, the Church recognized marriage as legitimated – only when it was contracted by the civil law and Church. However, the Church recognized it through shared communion and announcements to the community. As a separate ceremony, the wedding was recognized many centuries later, in the 10th century.
I sincerely hope that romantics are not too disappointed. To calm you down, I need to say that there are true patrons of love and family life. They are St. Adrian and St. Natalia in the Catholic Church, and St. Peter and St. Fevronia from Murom in Orthodoxy. So, those of you, who are still looking for love, may ask them for help. We need to remember about our beloved ones not only once in a year. Those who really love each other, do not need a special day.