Valentine’s Day

Not long ago I considered Valentine’s Day to be a ‘Hallmark holiday’, a day invented by card and candy companies (and let’s not forget the flower companies) to make a quick buck and snicker as men everywhere got in trouble if they forgot to get something for their sweetheart.

I recall working in a convenience store in my early twenties on the graveyard shift and how every February 13th men would come rushing in at all hours scouring through our overpriced selection of greeting cards and the single roses that were at least three to four dollars apiece. I found it amusing that the Valentine’s Day industry had a such a great racket going, one that used one of the most powerful forces in the universe to its advantage, the power of an angry woman.

Later I looked up the history of Valentine’s Day and discovered that in reality it was more about three Christian Martyrs with the name of Valentine, who became saints, than about love. It was not until a man by the name of Geoffry Chaucer wrote these lines in his 1382 work Parlement of Foules that the reference took on a more romantic note:

“For this was Saint Valentine’s Day, when every bird cometh there to choose his mate.”

This poem was written to commemorate the one year anniversary of the engagement of King Richard II of England to Anne of Bohemia.

By the time 1797 rolled around, a company in England had started printing a book entitled The Young Man’s Valentine Writer, which contained a collection of verses and romantic drawings for young lovers to place in their own homemade Valentines. By the mid 19th century, the Valentine industry made 1.3 million pounds in England, somewhat sped along by lower postal rates which allowed more ‘racy’ subject matter to be sent privately to lovers as well as the first anonymous Valentines to be sent by secret admirers.

Of course now a days it is more then just personalized letters that we send out to our loved ones, we have our children pass them out to their classmates, we buy chocolates, jewelry and other gifts to go along with mass produced cards written by large companies with professional greetings writers expressing our most personal thoughts.

So as we go forward towards this years Valentine’s Day, perhaps we should not be thinking of what we can buy for the ones we love the most, but instead how we can make them feel special whether that be from a handmade letter, like in the days of old, a romantic night by the water, or even something as simple as picking up the milk and dry cleaning without being asked to do so.

Love is an equation that is not measured with the price tag on a card or any expensive piece of jewelry or electronic bauble, but rather a remembrance and a reminding of what made us adore our lover in the first place. My best time with the woman I have had the extreme pleasure of being with for the last five years was always the long walks we used to take back in Chicago. We would walk without destination, feeling in our heart of hearts that in the end it was never the money or the bitter cold we walked through when Summer turned to Fall, but rather just the joy of being together, alone and untouchable in a world full of people.

This is a feeling that no greeting card or box of assorted chocolates dressed in red lace could ever provide, not even the ones with the caramel centers.

Happy Valentine’s Day to you and your loved ones. May the holiday be filled with romantic times and the purest of loves.