Dear Valentines,
We met sometime in the 1500s. The meeting hall of the European estate was filled with the smell of candles and herbs, the air fragrant and filled with the sweet sound of the lute and harp. Maybe we met via sharing poetry, or by la loterie d’amour, the medieval French tradition of pairing people up for the holiday, decided by a lottery. Saint Valentine’s celebrations have been held for a long, long time, but we’ve made it magical every time. Years before we’d have a printing press or a globe, people of all types have taken the day to celebrate the joy above all joys: love.
While you were celebrated continent-wide even 500 years ago, the history remains ever elusive. Nobody, even back then, knew which Saint Valentine they were celebrating, believe it or not. There were three martyred Saint Valentines: ne in Rome, one in North Africa, and one in Terni. We don’t know much of the African Valentine, but the Roman Valentine was documented better, albeit not by much. All we know is that he was burned alive, and in the spirit of love, his body parts were collected and put on display from Sicily all the way to Ireland. The oldest living mention of Saint Valentine, Parliament of Fowls, was written in the Roman’s honor, with the famous Geoffrey Chaucer doing the honors. It was a love poem, which would become a staple of your traditions. The one we most typically associate as the Saint Valentine, your patron, Valentinus of Terni, is the one all the stories are about. The Legenda Aurea, written just under a thousand years after his death, details his legend. The legend says that this Saint Valentine was arrested for preaching Christianity, and after his arrest, he healed his jailor’s daughter, curing her blindness. This, in turn, converted the jailor, so he released all his Christian prisoners. Afterwards, he was arrested and burnt alive, but not before sending a letter shaped like a heart to said daughter, signing his name as “From your Valentine.” The natural result of a good old-fashioned burning at the stake was the holiday of love.
Traditions slowly morphed from the musicians and feasts of the Middle Ages, to the distant love offerings of the colonial era. By now, you’d become a holiday of poetry and gifts rather than conversation. The norm for the time was to handwrite and beautify a card, writing verses on the edges; designs like knots, hearts, and Cupid made common appearances.
A few years later, as you gained more popularity, a book titled The Young Man’s Valentine Writer provided men who fretted over not having a smart line of poetry to say with smooth lines such as “Sweet maid I’m a soldier, to fight is my duty. From conquest I came, tho I be conquered by your beauty,” Quippy one-liners were soon all the rage, and according to a Cambridge University paper, over 400,000 individual valentine cards were sent in London alone by 1840. Companies quickly cottoned on, and soon valentines were being mass produced in factories. The cheaper and more convenient mass-produced valentine has become your staple in America. Cards, of course, aren’t your only tradition from the mid 1800s to survive to today, as chocolate has also made the transition. The conventional red, heart-shaped box of chocolates is what most people imagine a proper Valentine’s Day gift is, and it has had a wide cultural impact, appearing in everything from House to Charlie Brown.
Who would know better than you that I’m cherry-picking the norms that I showcase to make it better appear that there’s a congruence between previous and modern celebrations of you? I’m just trying to tell you that humans have always loved you, even if we’re strange in showcasing it, making some ideas die out on the way. But is that not what real love is?
That doesn’t mean that our traditions are bad, either. We have quite the lovely holiday celebration of our own here at Oak Forest. We’re throwing the upcoming Turnabout dance, a dance steeped in Valentine’s tradition dating back to when it first started as a way to flip the usual “boys ask the girls to the dance” shtick on its head, although that’s mainly died out. Hearts and cupids line the walls of the way to the dance floor, where it’s all decked out to look like “Paris, the city of love, along with our spirit week,” according to Ms. Bertrand, who’s running the dance. “Valentine’s is kind of integral.” Oak Forest is also offering Crushes, where students can choose to either anonymously write or sign a small letter addressed to a crush or friend attached to a can of the drink Crush, to be delivered on Valentine’s Day for just one dollar. Of course, to keep with the holiday, the Crush is Valentine’s Day themed, which counts even by Victorian standards.
Valentines, I can’t help but love you. I see an uncanny resemblance in you to the thing your holiday cherishes. You’re both equally mysterious in origin, and despite all the triviality you throw at us every year, humans have sought you out in their own way for hundreds years and will continue to for hundreds more.
