Heart of the Matter
Valentine’s Day Travesties and Trivia
VALENTINE'S DAY: IT is the time of year when people are in a rush for that loving feeling. Roses, chocolates, heart-shaped confections, and lingerie are among the hot commodities of the Love Month. Movie houses
are predominantly showing romance films of all kinds. Restaurants and hotel diners are all in a romantic mood with candlelight dinners.
Love seems to be the order or the preoccupation of everyone when Valentine's Day comes along. Although it has been celebrated for centuries, how the practice began and who started it are unknown to many.
10 new sayings are introduced each year for these chatty pastel candies. Recent additions were ‘Yeah Right,’ ‘Puppy Love,’ and ‘Call Home.’
History of Some Sort
At least eight St. Valentines are on record throughout history. Three of them celebrate their feast day on February 14, all of whom were beheaded for one reason or another. But among the vague biographical travesties of these Valentines could be the source of the celebrated 'love day' called Valentine's Day.
On February 14, 269, Roman Emperor Claudius II, dubbed 'Claudius the Cruel,' beheaded a priest named Valentinus for performing marriage ceremonies. Claudius II had outlawed marriages when Roman men began refusing to go to war to stay with their wives. In A.D. 496, Pope Gelasius I named February 14 as St. Valentine's Day in honor of this priest.
Although many popular urban legends linked celebrations devoted to love, sex, and fertility
to Valentine's Day, there is actually no historic basis to this. University of Kansas professor Jack Oruch argued that prior to the poem Love Birds (The Parliament of Fowls, 1382) by Geoffrey Chaucer (circa 1340-1400), there existed no link between Valentinus and romantic love.
Chaucer's poem, which was written to honor the first anniversary of the engagement of King Richard II of England to Anne of Bohemia, reads (as translated from Old English): “From this was Saint Valentine's Day, when every bird cometh there to choose his mate.” The treaty providing for the couple’s marriage was signed on May 2, 1381. They were married eight months later when they were both 15 years old. There is historical anomaly here, since Chaucer was referring to another person, Valentine
of Genoa, whose feast day falls on May 2.
On the other hand, Valentine's Day is also identified with an ancient Roman feast known as Lupercalia, celebrated in honor of the pagan god of agriculture and fertility, Faunus (Roman) or Pan (Greek). In mythology, Faunus or Pan is known as the god of agriculture, forest, fertility, and 'wild life' (pun intended). He is described as a playful and lascivious lower deity pursuing nymphs and having orgies. From the 13th to the 15th of February each year, two goats and a dog are offered at the Lupercal Cave at the foot of Mount Aventine to honor the deity.
Many historians traced the custom of sending verses to loved ones on Valentine's Day to Charles V (1380-1422), the Duke of Orleans. During the Battle of Agincourt, he was captured and imprisoned in the Tower of London. From there, in 1415, he sent his French wife his love greetings, the oldest known Valentine note. It is still on display in a museum in England.
It wasn't until 1537 when England’s King Henry VIII (1491-1547) declared February 14, Valentine's Day, an official holiday.
In the 1969 revision of the Roman Catholic Calendar of Saints, however, the feast day of Saint Valentine on February 14 was removed from the General Roman Calendar and relegated to particular or local celebration. It was reasoned that “though the memorial of Saint Valentine is ancient, it is left to particular calendars, since, apart from his name, nothing (factual) is known about Saint Valentine except
that he was buried on the Via Flaminia (in Rome) on February 14.” Traditional Catholics, who follow
the older, pre-second Vatican Council calendar, and some other Christian denomination like the Anglicans of England, however, still celebrate the day, albeit not in a spiritual way but in a romantic one.
Cupid’s Target
Cupid, a mythical symbol of Valentine's Day, became associated with the romantic celebration because he was the son of Venus, the Roman goddess of love, sex, and beauty. Cupid often appears on Valentine cards holding a bow and arrows because he is believed to use magical arrows to inspire feelings of love.
From the name of Cupid's Greek counterpart, Eros, the words 'erotic,' 'erotica,' 'eroticism,' and 'erotism' were derived, all of which pertain to 'sexual love.' It was in this myth that the heart was associated with love and erotism because the ancient Greeks and Romans believed it was the target
of the naughty love god's arrows. Anyone shot in the heart by one of Cupid's arrows would fall hopelessly in love.
Furthermore, in the earliest age of romanticism, the heart is the most common symbol of love of every kind. Ancient cultures believed that the human soul lived in the heart. Others thought it to be the source of emotion
and intelligence. Some believed the heart embodied a man's truth, strength, nobility, and compassion, as well as cleverness, temerity, eroticism, lust, and sexual urges. - Ernee Lawagan
