VALENTINE'S DAY MUMBLINGS

Dear George,

Another Valentine’s Day has come and gone. I did spend some time looking up the holiday’s history. According to legend, Valentine, the Bishop of Interamna in central Italy, was imprisoned in 273 A.D. by the emperor Claudius who was persecuting Christians. In violation of Roman law, Valentine had been aiding Christians to escape from prison, and he’d also been marrying Christian couples so that the new husband would not have to go to war in Claudius’ army. Claudius demanded that Valentine renounce his beliefs or be executed. Valentine’s faith was unwavering. In the days before his execution, Valentine, through his prayers, restored the sight of his jailer’s blind daughter, Julia. Asterius, the jailor, was so amazed and grateful that he converted to Christianity on the spot. Valentine had fallen in love with Julia who had been visiting him in the jail. On the day of his execution, February 14th, Valentine left Julia a note that was signed, “From your Valentine”. This, of course, is the origin story of the first Valentine card. St. Valentine’s skull is on display today in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Rome. He is known as the patron saint of lovers, beekeeping, epilepsy, and the plague. 

Historians speculate that the Valentine’s Day holiday had its origins in the Roman festival of Lupercalia which was held in mid-February. The festival celebrated the coming of spring and included fertility rites and a lottery which paired up single women and men. In the fifth century the pope banned Lupercalia celebrations and declared February 14th “St. Valentine’s Day.” In 1382 Geoffrey Chaucer wrote the first Valentine poem about birds selecting their mate on February 14th. Commercially printed Valentine cards were manufactured by the late 1700’s, and they became available in the U.S. by the mid-1800s. These days about a billion Valentine cards are exchanged worldwide per year. Teachers are the most frequent recipients, outdoing wives, mothers, and sweethearts. Nearly 30% of all flower sales in the U.S. are done around February 14th. Americans spend an average of $193 on Valentine’s gifts (though not true in my house). Of most importance, 25% of pet owners in the U.S. give Valentine’s Day gifts to their pets. 

We Menominee children celebrated Valentine’s Day in my grade school each year by exchanging cards in the classroom. This was an activity fraught with peril. There was a lot of trepidation about boys sending Valentine cards to other boys, though it was deemed o.k. if the card downplayed sentiment and featured cowboys, Indians, prizefighters, or other hyper-masculine characters. Boys sending Valentines to girls was almost as difficult, and senders of mushy cards to girls were unmercifully taunted by their peers. The other issue was how many cards one should send. A few children chose to send cards to everybody else in the class. However, this was generally frowned upon since it defeated the main purpose of exchanging cards — i.e., determining who were the most popular and least popular children by the number of cards received. Five or six cards per sender were regarded as a good number. In my classes there was usually one person who received cards from everyone and one or two who received almost none. I can’t remember exactly where I ranked among my classmates, but I wasn’t near the top and I wasn’t at the very bottom. Last week in my OLLI art class I made two handcrafted Valentine’s to give to Katja, but I’ve lost the knapsack in which I brought them home. That’s how it goes. 

Love,  Dave