Thursday, February 20
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been wondering about the actual, honest origins of Valentine’s Day. Is it a marketing creation of greeting-card companies, or did it have a juicier beginning?
St. Valentine’s Day has erupted into a commercial slam-dunk for florists, chocolate-makers, and Hallmark for so many years that many of us have possibly come to think that where we were way-back-when is where we still are now.
But that’s almost never the case.
Here’s what I found, because I just know that you want to know what I now know: in medieval times, the Roman emperor Gothicus beheaded a Roman priest for his Christian beliefs. The priest was named, alternately, St. Valentine or Valentinus. There is little romance in losing one’s head, unless one is using ‘I lost my head’ in a figurative sense, and then, absolutely, unequivocally, we understand. But St. Valentine was known as a distinctly unromantic figure.
So, no.
The legend of St. Valentine did manage to capture many imaginations, however, which resulted in a sort of “George Washington slept here” mentality. Churches throughout medieval Europe, from Madrid to Dublin to Prague to Glasgow, all insisted they had slivers or shards of Valentine’s skull or his body parts. A church in Rome displays a full-on skull it says is certainly Valentine’s.
Yikes.
Those who read Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” know mythology is important to maintaining and expanding religions. When I visited Rome some years ago, I was fascinated to see that the Catholics renamed the Temple of Minerva the Church of Minerva. When did Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom and war, become a Christian saint? But that’s adaptability for you; you’ve got a temple, you’ve got a heroine, and you’ve got a sense of repurposing, long before reduce, reuse, and recycle had ever planted itself in anybody’s head.
Some researchers believe early Christians supplanted the ancient Roman celebration of Lupercalia, held the middle of February, with St. Valentine’s Day. I’m grateful to them; a rural, hyper-masculine cult ran Lupercalia. They killed goats and dogs as sacrifices, drenched thongs with the blood, and raced through Rome’s streets whacking the bloody thongs at women in the belief it would enhance their fertility. Afterward, each man would randomly choose a woman’s name from a jar.
Sex would ensue.
The Pope put a stop to this. Probably because of the random public sex. Maybe because he was a feminist interested in protecting women. Who knows?
Fast forward to the 1300s, when the author Geoffrey Chaucer wrote of the feast of St. Valentinus. Back then, birds paired off to produce eggs in February. That spawned the practice of the nobility sending love notes during bird-mating season. Ophelia, in “Hamlet,” speaks of being Hamlet’s Valentine. Poems, plays, songs: the topic of love exploded. From there, the inevitable marketing creativity blossomed.
But really, what’s wrong with a day devoted exclusively to love? We’ve broadened it to include relatives, friends, and pets, all for the good.
It’s two weeks past Valentine’s Day, but I’m making a simple request: write a loving poem or a prose paragraph to your pet, your plant, your partner. Anyone or thing you love. Describe the object of your affection. Use similes and metaphors to expand your thought. You’ve heard it before: “My love is like a red, red rose, that’s newly sprung in June…” and so on.
And most of all, have fun.
When you are done, read the work to the object of your affection. Even if it’s a pink Depression-era lamp, carved-glass hearts adorning an hourglass shape, that draws your adoring eye. What’s not to love?
Thursday, February 20
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been wondering about the actual, honest origins of Valentine’s Day. Is it a marketing creation of greeting-card companies, or did it have a juicier beginning?
St. Valentine’s Day has erupted into a commercial slam-dunk for florists, chocolate-makers, and Hallmark for so many years that many of us have possibly come to think that where we were way-back-when is where we still are now.
But that’s almost never the case.
Here’s what I found, because I just know that you want to know what I now know: in medieval times, the Roman emperor Gothicus beheaded a Roman priest for his Christian beliefs. The priest was named, alternately, St. Valentine or Valentinus. There is little romance in losing one’s head, unless one is using ‘I lost my head’ in a figurative sense, and then, absolutely, unequivocally, we understand. But St. Valentine was known as a distinctly unromantic figure.
So, no.
The legend of St. Valentine did manage to capture many imaginations, however, which resulted in a sort of “George Washington slept here” mentality. Churches throughout medieval Europe, from Madrid to Dublin to Prague to Glasgow, all insisted they had slivers or shards of Valentine’s skull or his body parts. A church in Rome displays a full-on skull it says is certainly Valentine’s.
Yikes.
Those who read Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” know mythology is important to maintaining and expanding religions. When I visited Rome some years ago, I was fascinated to see that the Catholics renamed the Temple of Minerva the Church of Minerva. When did Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom and war, become a Christian saint? But that’s adaptability for you; you’ve got a temple, you’ve got a heroine, and you’ve got a sense of repurposing, long before reduce, reuse, and recycle had ever planted itself in anybody’s head.
Some researchers believe early Christians supplanted the ancient Roman celebration of Lupercalia, held the middle of February, with St. Valentine’s Day. I’m grateful to them; a rural, hyper-masculine cult ran Lupercalia. They killed goats and dogs as sacrifices, drenched thongs with the blood, and raced through Rome’s streets whacking the bloody thongs at women in the belief it would enhance their fertility. Afterward, each man would randomly choose a woman’s name from a jar.
Sex would ensue.
The Pope put a stop to this. Probably because of the random public sex. Maybe because he was a feminist interested in protecting women. Who knows?
Fast forward to the 1300s, when the author Geoffrey Chaucer wrote of the feast of St. Valentinus. Back then, birds paired off to produce eggs in February. That spawned the practice of the nobility sending love notes during bird-mating season. Ophelia, in “Hamlet,” speaks of being Hamlet’s Valentine. Poems, plays, songs: the topic of love exploded. From there, the inevitable marketing creativity blossomed.
But really, what’s wrong with a day devoted exclusively to love? We’ve broadened it to include relatives, friends, and pets, all for the good.
It’s two weeks past Valentine’s Day, but I’m making a simple request: write a loving poem or a prose paragraph to your pet, your plant, your partner. Anyone or thing you love. Describe the object of your affection. Use similes and metaphors to expand your thought. You’ve heard it before: “My love is like a red, red rose, that’s newly sprung in June…” and so on.
And most of all, have fun.
When you are done, read the work to the object of your affection. Even if it’s a pink Depression-era lamp, carved-glass hearts adorning an hourglass shape, that draws your adoring eye. What’s not to love?
And as always, if you are a Candlelight Writing Workshops participant, send your work to me. Even if you don’t hear from me, know I have read it.
And as always, if you are a Candlelight Writing Workshops participant, send your work to me. Even if you don’t hear from me, know I have read it.