Happy Valentine's Day: the festival of love is approaching!
Whether you see it as romantic and sentimental or commercial and consumerist, Valentine’s Day is THE day of the year dedicated to lovers. All over the world, on February 14, articles, the latest tips, cards, gifts, clothes, romantic trips, and sweet nothings to whisper in your lover’s ear flood the web.
Valentine’s Day: definitions
The Wikipedia entry for Valentine’s Day reads, ” […] also called Lovers’ Day or colloquially Valentine’s Day, is a day dedicated to love celebrated on February 14 each year. It began as a Christian holiday in honor of a Christian martyr named Valentine of Terni and, through subsequent folk traditions, has also become a significant cultural, religious, and commercial celebration of romantic love in many countries around the world.”
While Encyclopedia Britannica defines the day as, “[…] a holiday when lovers express their affection with greetings and gifts. […]. The holiday has expanded to express affection between relatives and friends.”
How did the feast of Valentine's Day come about? A brief history
Long before it was called Valentine’s Day, the oldest and most enduring Roman festival was held on February 15 in Ancient Rome. This was the pagan festival of Lupercalia, which was still being celebrated as late as the sixth century AD.
The so-called “purifying” event was highly-charged and featured animal sacrifices, random and frenzied copulation and the flogging of women as a fertility rite. Pope Gelasius I (Rome, Nov. 19, 496) permanently banned it and—in a canny bid to encapsulate pagan ritual in a Christian context—established in its place the feast day of St. Valentine the Martyr. But he changed the date to February 14, just to make sure there was no confusion between the two festivals.
Again Encyclopedia Britannica reports that, although there were several Christian martyrs named Valentine, the feast day may have been named after a priest martyred around 270 AD by the Roman emperor Claudius II Gothicus, while other sources claim that the name is descended from St. Valentine of Terni, a bishop, although these two saints may actually have been the same person.
Centuries later, in the late 1300s, Geoffrey Chaucer, author of The Canterbury Tales, wrote the poem The Parliament of Fowls to celebrate the wedding of Richard II and Anne of Bohemia. This poem contains one of the earliest references to the idea that St. Valentine’s Day is a special day for lovers. Chaucer associates Cupid with St. Valentine, who was thus confirmed in the popular conscience as a messenger of Love. In both A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Hamlet Shakespeare also refers fleetingly to St. Valentine.
The first literary work specifically devoted to St. Valentine appears to have been written in 1415 by the prince and poet Charles, Duke of Orleans (Paris 1391 – Amboise 1465), while he was a prisoner in the Tower of London after being captured during the Battle of Agincourt. It is a love letter, entitled Farewell to Love.
Valentine's Day around the world
- In the United States, Valentine’s Day gets everyone excited. The day is dedicated to every kind of love, affection and friendship: for partners, of course, but also for family, friends, schoolmates, pets, or anyone else you may be fond of and want to remind about the bond that ties you.
A particularly catchy tradition on St. Valentine’s in the States is to send anonymous cards. The excitement of receiving them is compounded by the heart-pounding agony — will your hopes and expectations be confirmed or dashed? —of trying to find out who sent them.
Every year Americans spend about $18 billion on candy, cards, sweets, flowers and jewelry. The most popular treats are heart-shaped sweets with romantic messages such as “be mine” or “kiss me” rather than chocolate. Valentine is the name, both male and female, for addressing the one you love by asking, “Will you be my Valentine? ” If the answer is yes, it means it will be love for life. - In Finland, Valentine’s Day only officially entered the calendar in 1996, but it has quickly become very popular, to the extent that Finns consider it the second most popular day after Christmas.
However, while almost all over the world romantic love is celebrated on this day, Finnish Valentine’s Day – Ystävänpäivä – is mostly dedicated to friends. Family members, friends, neighbors and co-workers and, of course, even couples exchange gifts, sweets such as Mokkapalat, as well as affectionate cards. People spend the day together and share meals and sports activities such as skating or sledding with the people they love.
3. In Japan, the tradition is for woman to take the initiative by giving chocolate to the person to whom she wishes to “declare herself,” or to colleagues or friends. On March 14, known as White Day, those who received these chocolates have an “obligation” to reciprocate.
Like so many other things in Japan, the chocolates given as Valentine’s Day gifts have been given specific names:
- Giri-choko (義理チョコ), which means “obligation chocolate,” is an inexpensive, plainly packaged chocolate that girls or women give to their classmates or co-workers.
- Tomo-choko (友チョコ), which means “friend’s chocolate,” is a more heartfelt and sincere gift, offered to friends one loves or exchanged among girls;
- Honmei-choko (本命チョコ), which means “favorite’s chocolate,” is given to the person you love, your boyfriend/girlfriend or husband/wife, or someone you are in love with and want to declare yourself to. [External link:https://www.shiroya.it/2021/02/02/san-valentino-in-giappone/]
4. In Peru, instead of exchanging roses on St. Valentine’s, many people opt for giving orchids, which originated in this country. In addition, on the most romantic day of the year, mass weddings take place with dozens of couples participating. This is a very popular tradition that saves on expenses and pleases everyone taking their vows on such an auspicious day.
Valentine's Day: a history of kissing
Studies conducted by Troels Pank Arbøll of the University of Copenhagen and Sophie Lund Rasmussen of the University of Oxford and published in the prestigious journal “Science”, traced the earliest known evidence of a romantic-sexual kiss between humans back to a Bronze Age manuscript from South Asia (India), tentatively dated to 1500 BC. However, previously unconsidered evidence shows that kissing on the lips has recently been back-dated to at least 2500 BC in early ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt.
Kissing seems to have been practiced in many ancient cultures over the course of several millennia. Sources from ancient Mesopotamia, in an area that lies between modern-day Iraq and Syria, now prove that the first documented kiss in the world can be dated even further back, to 4,500 years ago,
Valentine's Day: the famous Italian “Baci”
Pralines, chocolates in every possible shape, creamy spreads: on Valentine’s Day in Italy we give chocolate! On February 14 every year, chocolate producers come up with their latest creations.
The iconic design of Perugina’s “Baci” (kisses) hasn’t changed in a century: the dark blue tube and the characteristic font is recognizable today, as is the couple kissing under the stars. This product has been the Umbrian company’s biggest success.
The new chocolate was born almost by chance when, in 1922, Luisa Spagnoli, a manager with innovative ideas, noticed that the chocolate and hazelnut granules left over after processing were thrown away at the end of the day. Luisa thus invented a praline in the shape of a knuckle that she christened, “cazzotto” (little punch). Giovanni Buitoni, Luisa’s secret lover and head of the company, later gave the praline a decidedly more romantic name: “Bacio.”
This chocolate, which recently turned 100 years old, thus became a symbol of love.
Valentine's Day: why do people give chocolate?
Considered an elite product that in the past could only be purchased by the upper classes, chocolate was an expensive and hard-to-find food item since it came from faraway Latin America. It was also thought to be an aphrodisiac.
Certainly dark chocolate contains tryptophan, a substance that stimulates the production of serotonin, better known as the hormone of good moods and happiness. The presence of this substance, along with that of anandamide, makes chocolate an excellent anti-depressant.
Who created the first heart-shaped box of chocolates?
In the 1840s, Valentine’s Day caught on in the Anglo-Saxon world. It was the heyday of angels with bows and arrows; in fact, usually straight-laced Victorians loved to exchange elaborate cards depicting Cupid as a sweet, or somewhat mischievous, cherub.
Richard Cadbury, scion of the chocolate-making family, made improvements to the production technique by extracting pure cocoa butter from whole beans, thus producing a more palatable drinking chocolate than his countrymen were used to.
This process generated a large amount of cocoa butter, which Cadbury used to produce “eating chocolate” for the first time.
Realizing that this was a great opportunity, he began to sell the new chocolates in beautifully decorated boxes that he designed himself. Almost right away, boxes with images of Cupid with a bow and arrow or red roses began to appear, soon followed by heart-shaped boxes for St. Valentine’s.
The boxes were so beautiful that, once the chocolates were finished, they were kept and used to store mementos, locks of hair, or love letters.
Although Richard Cadbury did not actually patent the heart-shaped box, he was probably the first to produce one, and today Cadbury’s boxes have become collector’s items.
Valentine's Day trivia
JULIET
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.
ROMEO
I take thee at thy word:
Call me but love, and I’ll be new baptized;
Henceforth I never will be Romeo.
William Shakespeare’s quintessential love story, Romeo and Juliet, is one of the great English author’s most famous tragedies and was composed between 1594 and 1596.
For those who may not remember the plot, it tells the doomed love story of star-crossed lovers. Set in Verona—which, by the way, is highly sought-after as a spot to propose marriage or get married the two young protagonists, Romeo and Juliet, fall in love despite the fact that their families hate each other and will continue to fight one another to the bitter end. The lovers are not allowed to be together and choose death over separation, though there is a classic twist to the story. But no spoilers!
In Verona there is a Juliet Club which receives thousands of letters addressed to the heroine of the tragedy every year from all around the world.
It was the janitor of “Juliet’s Tomb,” Ettore Solimani, who in 1930 began collecting the missives left by tourists. Moved by the phenomenon, he had the brilliant idea of replying, and thus became Juliet’s “first secretary.”
Today, Juliet’s secretaries, volunteers who contribute to the association, respond to each message by signing with the name of the Shakespearean heroine.
In this age, completely dominated by technology, when we receive and send billions of voice and text messages, handwritten letters have regained value as a unique way to express our feelings. Despite the fact that Juliet is a fictional character, thousands of people all over the world actually choose to use such obsolete tools as pen and paper to “pour their hearts out ” to Juliet.
The Club receives 50,000 letters each year, there are 45 Secretaries from all over the world who volunteer their time, and the most touching letter is awarded a prize each year. Every letter is read, translated, replied to, and then stored in the Juliet Club archive which contains thousands of love stories. “This unique and striking phenomenon has made Verona the capital of love.”
Valentine's Day: some conclusions
How can we define love?
Infinite of lines of poetry, words, stories, novels have been written about love, creating universal, immortal works of art. There are numerous movies and TV series devoted to the subject, great music has been composed, countless songs have been written. Love is probably the most popular topic for poets and novelists, as mankind has always wondered what love is and how it can be defined.
Here then is a perfect definition from the great American poet Emily Dickinson:
That Love is all there is,
Is all we know of Love;
It is enough; the freight should be
Proportioned to the groove.
Couples who choose to get married with a celebrant-led ceremony should be reminded that “marriage is an event, but loving is a practice” and that the event should not distract from the practice.
The same applies to Valentine’s Day, which is a pleasant, exciting, romantic, and expectation-filled event —often an occasion for one of the partners to choose to propose, as we described in out blog — but it is not the same as the everyday practice of love.
It might be better to celebrate Valentine’s Day by trying not to get too carried away by consumerism. You don’t need to go overboard with chocolates, cards, paper hearts and expensive dinners out. Take a day off, go out for a walk, bring along a little surprise and tell the person you love why they are so special and what makes them unique.
Amore=Papageno and Papagena!
In the opera, The Magic Flute, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Papageno is a young bird hunter, his clothes covered with bird feathers, who plays the five-pipe Pan flute. Papageno accompanies the opera’s hero, Prince Tamino, to help him fight the forces of evil and save his beloved Pamina.
Papageno wants only one thing in life: a partner to love, his Papagena. This is no small feat, of course. Anyone who has found their own Papagena or Papageno know how important it is.
On his adventurous journey, Papageno finds Papagena, his perfect other half, and, even more miraculously, she loves him back.
May you all find you perfect other half and— let’s not forget—
Happy Valentine’s Day!
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