Cyber Cauldron

For me St Valentine’s Day is a bit of a weird celebration I am often convinced that it’s a made up holiday invented by Hallmark and the chocolate and flower providers. The holiday is associated romantic love but I will send friend’s valentine’s cards as a mark of respect for the love of our friendships. I never sign the cards to add a little mystery and it always nice to receive a card just saying that someone loves you.

To be honest never really thought much about it origins I knew it was name after a saint and it involved love but apart from that nothing else. So I thought it was time to look at it history and it origins I know that a festival was celebrated in Rome from the 13^th to the 15^th February called Lupercalia, which was done to avert evil spirits and purify the city, releasing health and fertility. Probably the origins of spring-cleaning.

So how do we get from today where over a billion valentine’s cards are sent to a pagan fest Well we need to travel back in time starting with my childhood in the mid 80’s where the current version of giving cards flowers and chocolates really took off with the diamond industry started to promote St Valentines Day as a day to give a diamond quickly followed by Hallmark, Interflora, Thornton’s jumping on the marketing hype.

Then next big even which involved the death of 7 people and Al Capone and Bugs Moran Gang The North side Gang, five members of the North Side Gang, plus 2 non-members Reinhardt H. Schwimmer and John May where under the orders of Capone where lined up against a wall and shot this event took place today in the year 1929 this event became know as the Saint Valentine’s Day massacre.

The next even was the start of today’s card and gift given rituals the year is 1913 and Hallmark begins the exploitation of another Christian feast day the feast day of St Valentine a day set as a feast day in Ad 496 by Pope, Gelasius by producing the first Valentine’s card at the same time tine heart shaped small sweets where produced.

But Hallmark was not the first to produce commercial cards this idea commercial cards stems from 1847 when Esther Howland of Worcester, Massachusetts, starts producing cards based on a English custom of sending love notes started in the mid 18^th century when people sent love notes made of paper and lace filled with love notes and rhymes this custom was so ingrained that suggested etiquette was published as the Young Man’s Valentine source unknown.

But St Valentines days was already know and had been since in 1601 when William Shakespeare mentions in Hamlet during the lament of Ophelia with the lines
“To-morrow is Saint Valentine’s day,/All in the morning betime,/And I a maid at your window,/To be your Valentine.”

The next major event in the Valentines Day events happen in the year 1415 when the first recorded Valentines note was sent from Charles, the Duke of Orleans who was imprisoned in Tower of London after being capture at the Battle of Agincourt. Just before that was the opening of the High Court of love in Paris a court dedicated to matters of the heart and relationships.

It is in the year 1382 when we have the first links with romantic love and Valentines Day in the poem “Parlement of Foules” (also known as the “Parliament of Fowls”, “Parlement of Briddes”, “Assembly of Fowls”, “Assemble of Foules”, or “The Parliament of Birds”) by Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400) which contains the lines “For this was on St. Valentine’s Day/ When every fowl cometh there to choose his mate.”

For the next major event in the Valentine story we have to jump back nearly a thousand year when the pagan festival of Lupercalia was still practice and celebrated the year is 496 and the then pope, Pope Gelasius declared 14 February to be St Valentine’s Day (in honour of the Christian Valentine of Terni who was martyred in AD 197 in the reign of Emperor Aurelian), a Christian feast day. This act is often seen as a way common to the church to absorb other celebrations Christianising them and making conversion simpler.

Now we come to the end of the line and that where logical people may stop, accepting that the only real link between Valentines day and pagan past is a shared feast day which was adopted by Christians to coincide with a pagan festival, but theirs a twist the St Valentine may have been another…

Valentine of Rome who is martyred, under Emperor Claudius. A priest or bishop in the city, who is arrested for giving aid to prisoners. While in jail, he is said to have converted his jailer to Christianity by healing his blind daughter. While another, later version, says he fell in love with the jailer daughter, sending her a note saying “From your Valentine”, Christian propaganda to validate the link with love? Also Valentine of Rome is supposed to have died on 14 February,??

Now if you run this time line forward like many pagans and writes will do you can see a link between the two festivals but we are looking back in time so we can see that valentines day may have been used to help conversation to Christianity it has very little to do with the roman of Lupercalia where celebration took the form of men being naked and slapping women on the bum with goat or dog whips to insure fertility and cleaning the city to insure health, fertility and preventing evil spirits.

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