A day for love as old as time

Ruapehu Bulletin, Volume 13, Issue 623, 13 February 1996, Page 11

A day for love as old as time

pair up as spring approaches. While customs may have changed, a universal love of romance has ensured that St Valentine's Day retains most of its original potency. ^ Letter boxes will brim with Valentine cards ^ illustrated with flowers and birds, symbols of fertility and romance. Saies of red roses and chocolates will soar. At one time, the sending of a Valentine card or gift meant a proposal of marriage. And while sending a card may be little more than a flirtation these days, St Valentine's Day remains the favourite day for marriage proposals.

So strong is the romantic eleme of St Valentine's Day that it is no longer clear which saint the y Christians intended to / commemorate on 14 February. I There were at least two saints * of that name and several martyrs because Valentine was a common name in ancient Roir Historians say he was proba a priest who was beheaded on the Flaminian way on 14 February 269 AD after he had succeeded in converting his prison guard to Christianity while in jail for helping Christian martyrs.

Although the Christians succeeded in changing ^ the name of the festival, and probably toning ^ _ down some its more bawdy practices, some customs continued almost to the present day. ^ One of the ceremonies of Lupercalia saw the names of young women drawn from a box and allotted to available men. This was practised in Europe right up to the 20th century.

f The 17th century English diarist Samuel Pepys tells how he was allotted Valentines each 14 February, drawing his own wife in 1666 and ^ recording, characteristically, that this would cost him five pounds — equivalent about $750 now. Early English accounts of the lovers' festival include one by the 14th century poet Geoffrey Chaucer, who wrote that on "Seynt Valentyes Day ... ye come for te chese your mates". Tradition once held that the first bachelor an unmarried woman encountered on Valentine's Day would become her husband. Consequently, young women would contrive

to see the man of their choice on that morning. According to one 19th \ century account, when she met A him, she would quote him the w I following verse: \ ; / "Good morrow Valentine, I go today, I To wear for you what you must V I pay- \ 7 A pair of gloves next Easter day." I / The ensnared man was obliged to (/ present the gloves on Easter morning. Gloves were an important symbol, representing purity. An 18th century English suitor would have sent his sweetheart a nair of eloves as a marriage

oposal.

In earlier centuries, St Valentine's Day had been more frivolous and married people could also draw Valentines. It could be a very expensive occasion, however. Pepys wrote that in 1667 the Duke of York "having once been Mrs Stewart's AA Valentine, did give her a jewel of about 800 T pounds." In parts of England, gifts would be left on the Valentine's doorstep by an admirer who knocked and then ran away.

tic 1 1 t no . - y. mo: he s Will y y® ruary. I f ♦ o / aints be miner y le I t \ I proba \ / ed J J ensi V the