Keeping
Cupid Busy
By Michael Remas
The Holiday of Love, that ancient custom that keeps
Cupid busy linking the world's lovers, is upon us again —
Valentine's Day.
Men buy greeting cards, flowers and chocolates for their sweethearts,
the gals select ties for their fellows, and kids send valentines
to their "secret pals," favorite teachers and parents
in a custom that will find millions of cards flowing through the
mails.
Although the origin is cloudy, tradition tells us it all began in
pagan Rome about 250 A.D., when a priest named Valentinus, bishop
of Spoleto, was put to death on Feb. 14 by Emperor Claudius II for
refusing to renounce Christianity. Valentinus, later named a saint,
had preached that love was a fine basis for marriage and sent a
farewell to his friend, the jailer's blind daughter, who had befriended
him, signing it "From your Valentine." Thus, the first
"valentine" was bom.
 In
496, Pope Gelasius established Feb. 14 as St. Valentine's Day to
be a festive
Christian occasion for young, unwed persons. During the 14th and
15th centuries folks believed birds mated on Feb. 14. Eventually,
Valentine's Day and Mating Day, the one for the birds, became one.
It was about 1400 that the first written valentine appeared. Charles,
Duke of Orleans, reportedly sent one to his love while he was a
prisoner in the Tower of London.
Exchange of love poems, sweet sayings and gifts seemed to grow quickly
after that, as did the oddness surrounding the event. Young men
in Elizabethan England threw
an apple or orange with valentine attached through the window of
any eligible women they adored. Women ate the whites of hard-boiled
eggs on Valentine's Eve and fastened bay leaves to their pillows
in hopes of dreaming of future husbands. Frenchmen sent sweethearts
huge, homemade lace-edged valentines.
But all was not sweet and smooth. In the 16th century, St. Francis
de Sales, leader of the church in England, criticized valentines
as immoral and forbade their use.
As church opposition relented, commercial valentines began to appear
in the 1800s to relieve the task of composing and making such greetings.
They became the
custom in the United States about 1850, with lacey hearts and flowers
types, although the verse was cautious an even shy, a far cry from
later racy writings. Reports are that in 1857 about 3 million valentines
were delivered for Feb. 14.
The oldest known valentines in this nation, however, date to the
early 1700s and were small cards with German script. World Book
Encyclopedia said they might have been made by monks and nuns.
One of the first large markers of valentines was Esther Rowland
of Worcester,Mass., who reportedly controlled the market in the
mid-1800s. Ironically, she died a spinster in 1904, never finding
her own valentine.
Although comic cards still exist, the insulting "vinegar"
valentines of the late
1800s and early 1900s have all but been replaced by sophisticated
and sentimental verse,
new art forms and finishing, fine paper, elaborate patterns, pop-up
designs and - senders
may hope - heart-winning appearance.
©
2010 Mountain States Collector
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