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| Image credit iMore.com |
This
weekend included a very special day: Valentine’s. The annual celebration of love,
companionship, and mandated gifts passed with very little fanfare for me, which
is a good thing, seeing as I am single.
I am used to disappointment and depression on this day; being surrounded
by bright advertisements encouraging me to show the one I love how much I care
inevitably reminds me that I don’t have anyone I love—not in the respect the
ads mean, anyway. And a “galentine” is
not the same thing.
This
year, however, I noticed that many of my non-single friends were not enjoying
the holiday very much, either. A dear
friend was upset that her boyfriend’s plans didn’t line up with her
expectations, while another couple’s romantic hike into the woods was snowed
out and considerably more frigid than romantic.
One more recent pair was anxious for a week about what to get the other
for their first Valentine’s, and I’m not sure they even saw each other for more
than an hour or so. High expectations,
high standards, miscommunication, and the stress of long anticipation can make
the holiday into a disaster. So I can’t
help but wonder—if the holiday makes this many people unhappy, why have
it? Whose idea was this, anyway?
I
believe in starting at the beginning in most of my endeavors, and so I’m going
back all the way to 269, which according to catholic.org is the year that the
man himself was martyred (of course, it might also have been 270, 273, or 280).
St. Valentine of Rome is the patron
saint of love, young people, and happy marriages (also bee keepers, epilepsy,
fainting, greetings, travelers, and plague, but those are less relevant). Not much is known about this man; one story
is that in response to a judge’s test of his faith, Valentine healed the man’s
blind daughter, restoring her sight and gaining the judge’s conversion to
Christianity in the process. He was
later imprisoned in Rome for aiding Christians and performing marriages, both
serious crimes according to Emperor Claudius.
Apparently Valentine and Claudius met and even became friends for a
while, until Valentine tried to talk the emperor into converting. At that point all bets were off: Claudius
sentenced Valentine to death if he didn’t renounce his faith; when he didn’t,
Valentine was beheaded.
This,
or varying accounts of the same, is all that’s known about Valentine. Interestingly, the Catholic church removed
Valentine from the calendar in 1969, citing too little information on him,
though they still acknowledge him as a saint.
Given as I am to thinking of Valentine’s Day as a secular holiday, I
thought that might have been the time the flower companies and Hallmark might
have co-opted the day for their own profit, but it turns out Valentine’s Day is
a lot older than that. In the usual
habit of the church carefully placing their holidays to take in pagan
celebrations, St. Valentine’s Day was declared to be February 14 by Pope
Gelasius, who was probably trying to stomp out Lupercalia, a Roman fertility
festival. The festival involved a kind
of love-lottery, with eligible men drawing out names of young women from a big
urn. A few centuries down the line, in
the Middle Ages, the assumption that mid-February was the beginning of birds’
mating season cemented the day’s association with romance. Written valentines began to appear after 1400,
the oldest we know of being a note from a prisoner to his wife in 1415.
Valentine’s
Day began to be celebrated in Great Britain around the 17th century,
meaning that the American colonists brought the custom along with them. For today’s elaborate Valentine industry, however,
we can thank a woman named Esther Howland.
Howland’s father owned a book and stationery store in the 1800s, setting
her at an advantage to make fine cards out of lace and fine paper. She started her own business out of it in the
1850s, setting a trend in America for the next thirty years. Back then the cards were elaborate, usually
hand-made, and not usually expensive.
These days about 25% of cards sent through the postal system are
valentines.
That
explains cards. What about the other two
gift clichés—flowers and chocolate? Both
of those as Valentine’s Day gifts go back to the 17th century as
well. Roses were the flower of choice
then as they are now, as they symbolize love in all forms. Chocolate, aside from being delicious, was soon
discovered to be an aphrodisiac, which explains itself, I am sure.
The
rest—teddy bears, jewelry, fancy dinners—evolve out of attempts by businesses
to capitalize on the holiday. Though it’s
common knowledge that one cannot buy love, the media and the economy sure do
want us to try. That’s not my problem—that
is what the media and the economy are supposed to do, after all. What bothers me is that modern customs of
Valentine’s Day are obscuring the traditional sweetness of the holiday. Fewer and fewer hand-written cards are being
sent in favor of terse emails or texts, while most people have forgotten that
once Valentine’s Day was a chance for someone to express an anonymous
attraction to a person to whom they are not (yet) attached. The day now seems to be reserved for existing
relationships, to the icy exclusion of those of us who are alone.
I
vote that we put a little more thought into this holiday, putting a bit more
sentiment into it and a bit less cash. Instead
of making expensive reservations, maybe try to remember whether they’ve paused
to look at a certain item in a store more than once. Instead of a mass-produced card with a not-anatomically-correct
heart on it, maybe just write them a note saying something you would be
embarrassed to say aloud. After all, the
important thing is not how much money you spend, but how much you think about
the person across the table from you. And
those of us who are single, stop worrying about the commercials or the
sales. Spread a little love to friends
and family, or take this opportunity to say something to someone who doesn’t
know how much you think about them. And
definitely hit up those candy sales on the 15th.
Sources:
"St. Valentine." Catholic Online.
"History of Valentine's Day." History.com.
"Esther Howland: Mother of the American Valentine." Victorian Treasury.
"Valentine's Day History." Borgna Brunner, infoplease.com.
"The History of Valentine's Day Gift Traditions." Streetdirectory.com.
"Valentine's Day is Over-rated." Pauline Wallin, PhD, About.com Mental Health.
"Call Me Unromantic, but Valentine's Day is Grossly Over-Commercialized." Alexander Chancellor, The Guardian.com.
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