'FESTIVAL OF ST. VALENTINE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 37, 14 February 1939, Page 2

'FESTIVAL OF ST. VALENTINE

CELEBRATED TO-DAY

To-day is St. Valentine’s Day. The I festival of St. Valentine, which was celebrated keenly by young men and ' women 30 or more years ago, has dej generated until the day, in recent I years, has gone its way almost with- ’ out notice. But this is an age of revivals, and it seems likely that the | festival may emerge from Grandma’s glory box.

i St. Valentine's Day used to provide I the opportunity for the exchange of | postcards with sentimental poems and : pictures or letters. And many a I meeting on that day ended happily in I marriage. It is not many years since I London postmen delivered many hun- ' dreds of thousands extra letters on St. 1 Valentine’s Day. The festival of St. Valentine ap- ! pears to have been the survival of one of the numerous heathen festivals which became grafted upon Christiani ity in the early ages of its history. Valentine, who was a Christian priest, was martyred in Rome in the third century, but, beyond the fact that his festival nearly coincided with the ancient Roman Lupercalla, he had no i connection whatever with the obserI vances which have made his day so famous in the succeeding centuries. Shakespeare puts into the mouth of I Ophelia the words of an old song: To-morrow is Saint Valentine’s Day, All in the morning betime, And I a maid at your window, To be your Valentine. An in his day the festival appears to have been well established. Samuel Pepys has various amusing entries in his diary about his and other people’s Valentines. Valentines were then drawn by lot, but the custom appears to have already become an expensive ! one in fashionable circles, for Pepys, • speaking of the celebrated Miss Stuart, afterwards Duchess of Rich- ! mond, says: “The Duke of York, bel ing once her Valentine did give her a jewel of about £BOO, and my Lord Mandeville, her Valentine this year, a ring of about £300.” <