Who started Valentine's Day anyway?
What's the REAL story behind Valentine's Day?
I hope I’m not alone when I say these commercialised “holidays” make me a very cynical person.
Yes, I enjoy the excuse to go out with my wonderful Husband (who I don’t consistently treat as he deserves the rest of the year) but I hate how busy all the restaurants are, how red and pink everything is, having to avoid all the tacky places and the workplace ‘competition’ of how romantic and spoilt everyone else’s partners are! The build-up also makes me incredibly relieved once it’s over, because by then, I’m just sick of it all.
So why do we do it?
Why do we want to make sure our partner feels loved, cherished and spoilt on this one day random the year? It doesn’t mean anything sentimental to us, it’s not a birthday or an anniversary. Just WHY?!
Well I did some research for you all and tried to cut the waffle: although it’s changed over the ages so it’s not that straightforward…
St. Valentine is the guy who kicked it all off, he was a priest from 3rd century AD in Rome. It was against the law in that time for soldiers to be married as apparently men without wives and children made better soldiers. However, in the name of love, Vlentinus would perform marriages in secret for young lovers. He was discovered and killed for his actions, before his death he wrote a letter to his daughter and signed it off “From your Valentine”.
We then have ‘Lupercalia’ – a fertility festival where men sacrificed goats and slapped women with the goat hide. Seems odd to me, but the women then believed if they got touched by the hides they would be fertile in the coming year. They would then put their names in an urn and the bachelors would choose a name to be their wife. This was around February time and therefore also got merged into Valentine's.
Getting into more recent times, during the Middle Ages it was believed that February 14th was the beginning of the birds mating season (seems terribly specific to me and I do wonder who on earth managed to pinpoint the exact day….)
The oldest known ‘Valentine’s card’ was a poem written by Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wise while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. Commercial pre-written cards then came into play in 1990. I say lets go back to the hand-written poems… challenge accepted?
Moral of the story, Valentine’s Day has been sculpted over the years by different people and traditions. So I say, ignore the shops/media/friends/colleagues and make your own Valentine’s Day that means something to YOU. Create your own traditions and let the romance flow through personal experiences and memories created by just the two of you <3
Furthermore, making time and effort for each other shouldn’t just be reserved for one day a year. At LoveDrop we believe date nights should be regular and exciting, that’s why we wrap it all up in our bi-monthly subscription box.
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