It's Valentine's Day
By Chris Petry
Well, tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. Love is in the air. Or something like that. I’ll probably just order a pizza, watch my usual double feature of My Bloody Valentine (1981) and Valentine (2001) and sob because nobody loves me. No! This is the year I finally take charge of my life and feelings. I’m all I need! Me! And pizza. This just in, my bloodwork reveals that I need to cut back on the pizza. Is there any end to the tortures of this cruel universe?
Composing myself. So, why do we celebrate Valentine’s Day anyway? Shouldn’t we love our loved ones all year round’? Well, it all begins in c.226 in Central Italy where the future Saint Valentine is born. Saint Valentine was, of course, the patron saint of Terni (the central Italian City where he was born). He was martyred at the age of 42 and buried on the Via Flaminia (an ancient Roman road) on February the 14th. In AD 269, then-Pope Gelasius established the Feast of Saint Valentine, to be celebrated every February 14th in honor of his martyrdom.
In the Middle Ages, it was a common belief that birds paired in mid-February, coinciding with the Feast of Saint Valentine, and the romantic sentiment was incorporated into the holiday soon after. Where did the whole bird/romance association come from? Well, that was the work of English poet and author Geoffrey Chaucer, best known for his magnum opus, The Canterbury Tales. His 1382 poem, Parliament of Fowls, describes birds departing on Saint Valentine’s Day in search of mates. The poem is as follows:
"For this was on Saint Valentine's Day
When every bird comes there to choose his match
Of every kind that men may think of
And that so huge a noise they began to make
That earth and air and tree and every lake
Was so full, that not easily was there space
For me to stand—so full was all the place."
In 1400, The Charter of the Court of Love, reportedly authored by the French King Charles VI, details the Saint Valentine’s celebrations at the Royal Court. Amongst the feasting and dancing, attending ladies would bear witness to the disputes of quarreling lovers and rule on them. In other words, they’d vote on who was at fault in the lover’s quarrel. The 15th century also saw an explosion of romantic Valentine’s love letters and poetry. Then, of course at the dawn of the 17th century, Shakespeare includes this piece of dialogue spoken by the Danish noblewoman Ophelia in Hamlet.
"To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day,
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your Valentine.
Then up he rose, and donn'd his clothes,
And dupp'd the chamber-door;
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more."
Could this be the first explicit writing of someone being another’s "Valentine" in English? Edmund Spenser’s earlier Faerie Queen, published in 1590 is without doubt the first use of the immortal verse, “Roses are red, violets are blue.” A common phrase spoken around February as romantic pairings are first and foremost in everyone's mind. By the late 18th century, Valentine's Days cards were printed and distributed widely.
While the inevitable commercialization of the holiday began as early as the 1700s with printed cards, it was probably the explosion of heart-shaped chocolate boxes in the 1860s that really started the “shove the Christmas stuff off the shelves, it’s time for paper hearts” frenzy we all recognize today. British chocolatier Richard Cadbury is to thank for that. His father, Quaker John Cadbury was the founder of Cadbury Cocoa, a company still hard at work giving us our chocolatey fix in 2025.
So, as you can see, the history of Valentine’s Day is long, poetic and littered with the types of stories, folklore and innovationations that make it such a prime candidate for commercial exploration. Now back to my early 80s Canadian slasher flick about a deranged coalminer. I do LOVE that movie.
