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IDES OF FEB, MINUS 1 2/17/2010 9:36:07 AM
I have misgivings about certain holidays, and without confirming suspected Scroogisms relative to any specific occasion, I will address my comments solely toward Valentine’s Day.
Across the country and around the world, Valentine cards, flowers and candy, over four billion assorted offerings, are sent or given to people who need to know for sure that they are really care about. In 1840 a lady named Esther Howland began selling Valentine cards (was she a clerk at Hallmark?) and they caught on. Today, Christmas cards are Numero Uno, but Valentine cards are a close second and gaining ground.
It’s interesting to note, 85% of all Valentine cards are purchased and distributed by women. The remaining 15% are male guilt-reducers.
History tells us a fellow named Atiquilla Valentine (or Valentinus) was a Roman priest in the 3rd century at the same time Emperor Claudius II had the brilliant idea that unmarried blokes made better warriors than family men with kids. So, he, the Emperor, banned all nuptials. “Hold your horses,” said Fr.Valentine, “not on my watch! Any of you boys and girls want to get married, come and see me!”
They did, by the hundreds. And he married them—in secret.
Of course, some frustrated fool blew the whistle and ol’ Claudius got wind of it. Valentine was promptly arrested and sentenced to death.
While he was incarcerated and awaiting his ill-deserved fate, he actually (if accidentally) sent the very first known “Valentine” himself. It seems his jailor, Flavius Enictus, had a young and lissome daughter named Vivian who often visited the priest and brought him chocolates, his only worldly passion. Shortly before his execution, he wrote to her asking for some particularly coveted bonbons, and he signed the letter “From your Valentine.”
A lot of people like afore mentioned Esther Howland decided February 14 was a good day to celebrate Valentine’s Day because that is the date of Fr. Valentine’s martyrdom in 270 AD. Naturally, once the story got out, he was canonized, and St.Valentine came to symbolize the sort of chap everyone admires: sympathetic, industrious, inventive, heroic—and, of course, dramatically and incurably romantic.
Finally, about two hundred years later, Pope Galesius said, “Okay, you guys win, it’s hereby official. February 14 is now and forever to be known as Saint Valentine’s Day. Send a memo to Hallmark and Whitman’s, and make sure we get our cut.”
But the story doesn’t end there. Remember the Middle Ages? The peasants and their clergy in England and France had some idea that on February 14 the grouse, geese, robins, sparrows, pheasants et al began their mating season, confirming once and for all that mid-February—Valentine’s Day—was a time of co-habitation, fornication, connubial bliss and conjugal visits.
Quite taken up by this, it is reputed that while pining away in the Tower of London, Charles, Duke of Orleans, penned an original Valentine poem to his wife after he was taken prisoner during the Battle of Agincourt. It is alleged he wrote this heart-melting epic in 1415, and the next time you’re in town you can see it at the British Library, along with the Valentine to Catherine of Valois King Henry V commissioned John Lydgate to write on his behalf (could this be where Rostand got the idea for Cyrano de Bergerac?).
Yeah, but what about Cupid, you ask? Well, Cupid is to Valentine’s Day pretty much what Santa Claus is to Christmas. You see, he’s just a myth made up by the Romans—well, first the Greeks, only they called him Eros (guess what word we get from that!) Anyway, he had this bow and arrow set he got for his birthday from his mom Aphrodite (“Be careful with that thing or you’ll put your eye out!”)
According to the myth, if he shot you with one of his golden tips, you’d go ga-ga over the next damsel or gent who crossed your path. Right.
The idea of Cupid became so popular (like Santa) that he has come to symbolize the true meaning of Valentine’s Day. 99% of the cards, flowers and candy sold today embody his persona—and to hell with St.Valentine.
The point is, like Christmas, Valentine’s Day has fallen into the slimy pond of commercial enterprise and drowned in a myriad of misconceptions that have nothing to do with its original purpose. The distribution of syrupy verse few can read without gagging, caloric candy that will grow moldy and stale, and flowers that will wilt and fade before we can recall with fondness why they were sent in the first place, has become, as has the doling out of gaily wrapped gifts in late December, a rite of expected passage—as meaningless as it is phony.
All right, perhaps I have succumbed to the comfort of a crotchety Ebenezer Scrooge, but what misdemeanor have I committed in calling a spade a spade? . . .Is it a felony to prefer Memorial Day, Flag Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day and New Year’s Day over Valentine’s Day and Christmas?
If so, Your Honor, I plead guilty and throw myself on the mercy of the court. . . . But don’t get me started on Presidents’ Day!
