Valentine romance

Ruapehu Bulletin, Volume 6, Issue 323, 13 February 1990, Page 9

Valentine romance

Valentine's Day, (tomorrow), is celebrated by people around the world in many different ways. They send cards to each other asking, "be my valentine," American children make their own cards and hold classroom valentine parties, older students attend dances, and many people send gifts of flowers, chocolates or candy.

In Britain some children sing St Valentine's Day songs and some people bake valentine buns with caraway seeds, plums or raisins. People in Italy have feasts and many unmarried women stand at their windows from sunrise watching for the right man to pass. In Denmark people send white flowers called snowdrops to each other. There are many theories about the bcginnings of Valentine's Day. Some trace it to an ancient Roman festival called Lupercalia. Other experts connect the event with one or more saints of the Christian church. Still others link it with an old English belief that birds choose their mates on February 14. Valentine's Day probably came from a combination of all three of those sources - plus the belief that spring is a time for lovers. The ancient Romans held the festival of Lupercalia on February 15 to ensure protection from wolves. During this celebration, young men struck people with strips of animal hide. Women took the blows because they thought that the whipping made them more fertile. After the Romans conquered Britain in A.D. 43, the British borrowed many Roman festivals. Many writers link the festival of Lupercalia with Valentine's Day because of the similar date and the connection with ferlility.

The early Christian church had at least two saints named Valentine. According to one story, the Roman Emperor Claudius II in the A.D. 200s forbade young men to marry. The emperor thought single men made better soldiers. A priest named Valentine disobeyed the emperor's order and secretly married young couples. Another story says Valentine was an early Christian who made friends with many children. The Romans imprisoned him because he refused to worship their gods. The children missed Valentine and tossed loving notes between the bars of his cell window. This tale may explain why people exchange massages on Valentine's Day. According to still another story, Valentine restored the sight of his jailer's blind daughter. Many stories say Valentine was executed on February 14 about A.D. 269. In A.D. 496, Pope Gelasius named February 14 as St. Valentine's Day. The earliest records of Valentine's Day in English tell that birds chose their mates on that day. People used a different calcndar before 1582, and February 14 came later in the spring than it does now. Geoffrey Chaucer, an English poet of the 1300's wrote in The Parliament of Fowls, "For this was on St. Valentine's Day, When every fowl cometh there to choose his mate". Shakespeare also men-

tioned this belief in A Midsummer Night's Dream. A character in the play discovers two lovers in the woods and asks, "St Valentine is past; Begin these woodbirds but to couple now?" Early Customs People in England probably celebrated Valentine's Day as early as the 1400's. Some historians trace the custom of sending verses on this day to a Frenchman named Charles, Duke of Orleans. Charles was captured by the English during the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. On Valentine's Day, he sent his wife a rhymed love letter from the Tower of London, where he was imprisoned. Many Valentine's Day customs involved ways that single women could learn who their future husbands would be. English women of the 1700s wrote men's names on scraps of paper, rolled each in a little piece of clay, and dropped them all into water. The first name that rose to the surface supposedly had the name of a woman's true love. Also in the 1700s, unmarried women pinned five bayleaves to their pillows on the eve of Valentine's Day. They pinned one leaf to the centre of the pillow and one to each coner. If the charm worked, they saw their future husbands in their dreams. In Derbyshire, a county in central England, young women cir-

clcd the church 3 or 12 times at midnight and repeated such verses as: I sow hempseed. Hempseed I sow. He

that loves me best. Come after me now. Their true loves then supposedly appeared. Turnpage 10

Valentine

From page 8 On of the oldest customs was the practice of writing women's names on slips of paper and drawing them from a jar. The woman whose name was drawn by a man became his valentine, and he paid special attention to her. Many men gave his valentine a pair of gloves. Wealthy men gave fancy-dress balls » to honour their valentines. One description of Valentine's Day during the 1700s tells how

groups of friends met to draw names. For several days, each man wore his valentine's name on his sleeve. The saying wearing his heart on his sleeve probably came from this practice. The custom of sending romantic messages gradually replaced that of giving gifts. In the 1700s and 1800s, many stores sold handbooks sscalled valentine writers. These books included verses to copy and various suggestions about writing valentines.