jayarrarr:
St. Valentine’s Day, originally known as the Feast of Saint Valentine, and now simply called “Valentine’s Day” in recognition of the millions of people who don’t believe in sainthood but still want chocolate, is an ancient liturgical celebration that occurs on February 14th in many countries.
Although mostly divorced from church association in modern times, the “holiday” persists. And I put the word “holiday” in scare quotes because in most places you still go to work and school and banks are still open and the mail still runs — I mean, how are you supposed to get your valentines otherwise? Let’s admit it, when Valentine’s Day falls on a Saturday or a Sunday it kinda sucks, because half the fun of the day is rubbing the fact that people love you in the faces of those who receive no such tokens of affection.
And, of course the day has become commercialized — what holiday hasn’t? Christmas is commercialized as all fuck, but that doesn’t stop people from enjoying it and celebrating its true meaning. Halloween has been commercialized but you never hear people griping about that. Why? Because Halloween is fun. St. Patrick’s Day has been commercialized, but that doesn’t stop people from having no idea why it’s observed and getting drunk anyway.
The first recorded association of Valentine’s Day with romantic love was written by Geoffrey Chaucer in 1382 (in Parlement of the Foules). The funny thing about that was that Chaucer was writing fiction, and at the time of his writing there was no such tradition. He made it up. That’s what we do when we write fiction — we make stuff up.
But the thing is, there were other authors around the same time writing similar sentiments, and nobody knows who came up with this idea first, but considering the internet had not been invented yet, let alone the printing press, we can be fairly certain that none of them plagiarized each other. They just happened to come up with the same cool idea at the same time, which happens.
Then, in 1600, Shakespeare mentioned Valentine’s Day (and this whole ridiculous notion of romantic love) in Hamlet, which, despite Chaucer’s 200-year head start, has probably been read by more people.
Soon thereafter, it was discovered that most people aren’t Shakespeare, and aren’t capable of penning beautiful sonnets of love to their beloved. So, in 1797 a British publisher printed a collection of a bunch of verses for dudes to crib off of. I’m sure some of them claimed they wrote them themselves. Bygones.
Many blame Hallmark® with “creating” and capitalizing on this holiday. The latter may be true, but the former certainly isn’t. That credit is properly bestowed on one Esther Howland, who in 1848, at the age of 19, received an ornate Valentine’s Day card from a British business associate of her father’s. Esther was smitten (with the idea of sending Valentine’s cards — not with her father’s business associate, you pervs!). Her father owned a book and stationary store, and Esther, who’d known nothing of the tradition of exchanging cards on the day prior to receiving that one, thought it’d be a fine idea to make her own and sell them in her father’s store, and that’s exactly what she did.
The Hallmark® company, it must be noted, did not exist until 1910. So if you’re going to blame someone for the American commercialization of love, you should probably blame the lovely Esther who, as a 19-year-old girl in the late 1800s, set upon a venture that quickly grew into a successful business grossing $100,000 a year — that’s over 2.7 million dollars in today’s money. She sold the venture in 1881 to George Whitney.
Scoff at the commercialization of the day if you must, but instead of improperly crediting Hallmark® with this monstrous feat, you’d do better to remember dear Esther, who, if she could see the multi-billion-dollar business that is Valentine’s Day today, would probably bang her head on her desk repeatedly and lament, “WHY DID I SELL!?!?? WHHHHHYYYYYY!?!?!”
Happy Valentine’s Day.
© 2013 by Jennifer R.R. Mueller