Happy Valentines Day folks.
I wish you guys loads and loads of Love this day and every day in your lives.
For curious minds read below an article i stumbled on about the history of Valentines day.
THE LEGEND OF ST.
VALENTINE
The history of Valentine’s Day–and the story
of its patron saint–is shrouded in mystery. We do know that February has long
been celebrated as a month of romance, and that St. Valentine’s Day, as we know
it today, contains vestiges of both Christian and ancient Roman tradition. But
who was Saint Valentine, and how did he become associated with this ancient
rite?
The Catholic Church recognizes at least three
different saints named Valentine or Valentinus, all of whom were martyred. One
legend contends that Valentine was a priest who served during the third century
in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers
than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men.
Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued
to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When Valentine’s actions were
discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death.
Other stories suggest that Valentine may have
been killed for attempting to help Christians escape harsh Roman prisons, where
they were often beaten and tortured. According to one legend, an imprisoned
Valentine actually sent the first “valentine” greeting himself after he fell in
love with a young girl–possibly his jailor’s daughter–who visited him during
his confinement. Before his death, it is alleged that he wrote her a letter
signed “From your Valentine,” an expression that is still in use today.
Although the truth behind the Valentine legends is murky, the stories all
emphasize his appeal as a sympathetic, heroic and–most importantly–romantic
figure. By the Middle Ages, perhaps thanks to this reputation, Valentine
would become one of the most popular saints in England and France.
ORIGINS OF
VALENTINE’S DAY: A PAGAN FESTIVAL IN FEBRUARY
While some believe that Valentine’s Day is
celebrated in the middle of February to commemorate the anniversary of
Valentine’s death or burial–which probably occurred around A.D. 270–others
claim that the Christian church may have decided to place St. Valentine’s feast
day in the middle of February in an effort to “Christianize” the pagan
celebration of Lupercalia. Celebrated at the ides of February, or February 15,
Lupercalia was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of
agriculture, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus.
To begin the festival, members of the Luperci,
an order of Roman priests, would gather at a sacred cave where the infants
Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were believed to have been cared for
by a she-wolf or lupa. The priests would sacrifice a goat, for fertility, and a
dog, for purification. They would then strip the goat’s hide into strips, dip
them into the sacrificial blood and take to the streets, gently slapping both
women and crop fields with the goat hide. Far from being fearful, Roman women
welcomed the touch of the hides because it was believed to make them more
fertile in the coming year. Later in the day, according to legend, all the
young women in the city would place their names in a big urn. The city’s
bachelors would each choose a name and become paired for the year with his
chosen woman. These matches often ended in marriage.
VALENTINE’S DAY: A
DAY OF ROMANCE
Lupercalia survived the initial rise of
Christianity and but was outlawed—as it was deemed “un-Christian”–at the end of
the 5th century, when Pope Gelasius declared February 14 St. Valentine’s Day.
It was not until much later, however, that the day became definitively
associated with love. During the Middle Ages, it was commonly believed in
France and England that February 14 was the beginning of birds’ mating season,
which added to the idea that the middle of Valentine’s Day should be a day for
romance.
Valentine greetings were popular as far back
as the Middle Ages, though written Valentine’s didn’t begin to appear until
after 1400. The oldest known valentine still in existence today was a poem
written in 1415 by Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife while he was
imprisoned in the Tower of London following his capture at the Battle of Agincourt. (The greeting is now part of the manuscript collection of the
British Library in London, England.) Several years later, it is believed that
King Henry V hired a writer
named John Lydgate to compose a valentine note to Catherine of Valois.
Americans probably began exchanging hand-made
valentines in the early 1700s. In the 1840s, Esther A. Howland began selling
the first mass-produced valentines in America. Howland, known as the “Mother of
the Valentine,” made elaborate creations with real lace, ribbons and colorful
pictures known as “scrap.” Today, according to the Greeting Card Association,
an estimated 1 billion Valentine’s Day cards are sent each year, making
Valentine’s Day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year. (An
estimated 2.6 billion cards are sent for Christmas.) Women purchase approximately 85 percent of
all valentines.
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