There are
numerous legends surrounding Valentine’s Day. Some say that St Valentine
performed secret Christian weddings for the soldiers of Roman Emperor Claudius
II, who supposedly believed married men made good soldiers. Others claim that
St Valentine cut hearts from parchment to remind these soldiers of their vows.
It is said that he was executed for this, and before his execution, he
performed a miracle by curing his jailer’s daughter of blindness.
This, however,
remains legend. Claudius II never forbade marriage among his soldiers, and in
fact encouraged them to take wives for themselves after victory over the Goths.
The Valentines honoured on February 14 are in fact Valentine of Rome and
Valentine of Terni. Valentine of Rome was a priest who was martyred in 269 CE
and sanctified to sainthood by Pope Galesius in 496 CE. Valentine of Terni was
the bishop of Interamna and was martyred under Emperor Aurelian in 273 CE. The
current General Roman Calendar does not even list Saint Valentine’s Day
anymore, noting: “Though the memorial of Saint Valentine is ancient, it is left
to particular calendars, since, apart from his name, nothing is known of Saint
Valentine except that he was buried on the Via Flaminia on February 14.”
Until recently,
Valentine’s Day was not even associated with romantic love. In Slovenia, Saint
Valentine was the saint of spring, and patron of beekeepers and pilgrims.
“Saint Valentine brings the keys of roots,” they said, as plants started to
grow at the start of spring in the northern hemisphere. The day of love was
traditionally 12 March, Saint Gregory’s day, or 22 February, Saint Vincent’s
day, with the patron saint of love, Saint Anthony’s day falling on June 13.
The first
recorded association of Valentine’s Day with romantic love is actually by
Geoffrey Chaucer, in his poem Parliament of Foules, written in 1382. "For
this was on St. Valentine's Day, when every bird cometh there to choose his
mate." The poem was written to honour the engagement of King Richard II to
Anne of Bohemia, and readers naturally assumed he was referring to February 14,
but some have noted that he might have been referring to the Feast Day of St
Valentine of Genoa, which was celebrated on 3 May, as by that time birds have
begun mating. Nevertheless, the connection stuck.
And so,
Valentine’s Day grew to be associated with love via poets of the ages. The
association with red roses also began the same way, with the earliest reference
in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene in 1590 CE: “She bath'd with roses red,
and violets blew, And all the sweetest flowres, that in the forrest grew.” The
Cliché Valentine’s poem was written in its earliest form in Gammer Gurton’s
Garland, back in 1784 CE, “The rose is red, the violet's blue, The honey's
sweet, and so are you. Thou art my love and I am thine; I drew thee to my
Valentine: The lot was cast and then I drew, And Fortune said it shou'd be
you.”
Nowadays
Valentine’s Day has become much more commercial, with the day even celebrated
in corporations and schools. In fact, teachers are by far the people who
receive the most Valentine’s every year. Worth over US$ 15 billion a year, it
truly has become a modern-day commercial holiday. Yet something seems lost in
the translation – people spend so much because they feel obligated to. And, in
a way, perhaps because of that, they do not spend that much during the rest of
the year. Instead of a celebration of the love we show during the year, we have
instead begun to celebrate love ONLY during this one day of the year.
Let me be clear
– Valentine’s Day is an excellent way to remind you the love needs to be
celebrated. Let it remind you every year that you NEED to celebrate love in any
way you can, as often as you can, because it is the pinnacle of the brief
existence that is our lives. Love is a reformer, a teacher, a source of
motivation, a path to self-discovery, but perhaps most importantly, it is the
connection to another human being in the most intimate way possible. And it is
the only feeling that’ll allow you to one day say, oh, I don’t know, something
like this:
“Hey, I've seen things you couldn't
imagine, and done things I'd prefer you didn't. I don't exactly have a
reputation for being a thinker; I follow my blood, which doesn't exactly rush
in the direction of my brain. So I make a lot of mistakes. A lot of wrong
bloody calls. A lot of years, and there's only one thing I've ever been sure
of. YOU!
Hey, look at me. I'm not asking you for
anything. When I say I love you, it's not because I want you, or because I can't
have you - it has nothing to do with me. I love what you are, what you do, how
you try. I've seen your kindness, and your strength, I've seen the best and the
worst of you and I understand with perfect clarity exactly what you are. You're
a hell of a woman. You're the one!”
(With apologies to William the Bloody)
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