ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING

By Edwin Cooney

I wasn’t going to write about this subject. I really wasn’t! Then, someone wanted to know:

“What does love have to do with Valentine’s Day?”

The inquirer went on to say that she wasn’t putting the romantic aspect of Valentine’s Day down, but she suspected that Valentine’s Day had more meaning for greeting card and candy companies than it did for lovers.

Cynical as this question may sound on its surface, it seems that this lady is in rather good company. The late great comedian Will Rogers spent nearly a half hour of radio time on Mother’s Day 1935 expounding on the observation that florists benefit as much if not more than mothers do from Mother’s Day. Noting that florists, of course, have mothers too, Rogers went on to observe that florists invariably “…got more flowers than they got mothers!”

Come to think of it, February 14th is a rather strange time of the year to be celebrating romance. I would guess that most think of romance as being associated with flowers—just as mothers are so associated. Since Mother’s Day is celebrated the second Sunday in May, just at the peak of the spring flower season, one would think that Valentine’s Day might be the third Sunday of May or perhaps the second Saturday of May. Then the florists would have a truly gigantic bonanza of a weekend! However, if I’m going to be responsive to the inquiry (what does love have to do with Valentine’s Day?), I suppose I’d better stop fantasizing and lay out the facts and fables as I’ve found them.

Valentine’s Day had its roots in pagan Rome. Each year in ancient Rome, the ides of February would find the good citizens of Rome celebrating the festival of eroticism which was called the Lupercalia. Lupercalia celebrated the Goddess Juno Februata of febris (“fever” of love.)

With the coming of Christianity, there was a movement to replace what Christians thought of as the sinful celebration of the flesh with a more spiritual festival. At first, Christian clerics sought to coax the good citizens of Rome to celebrate the virtues of their favorite saint and to do the celebrating on the day before Lupercalia which traditionally began on February the fifteenth. However, even as Rome was becoming increasingly dedicated to Christianity, somehow piety was something the people found hard to get excited over.

Then suddenly things changed about 269 A. D.

It seems that Emperor Claudius II was finding it hard to get men to enlist in the army he was trying to put together for fighting his most recent war. The specific problem was that too many men were getting married and were thus exempt from the Emperor’s draft. The only solution to that was to hand down a decree outlawing romance and marriage—at least for the present.

Enter the priest who would be known as Saint Valentine. (His actual name was Valentinus.)

Valentinus began secretly marrying young couples in defiance of the Emperor’s decree. This wouldn’t do, of course, and one dark night, just as he was performing a secret marriage, he and the couple he was marrying heard soldiers outside. Fortunately, the couple got away, but Valentinus, not being as agile as he used to be, got caught.

Thrown into prison and sentenced to death, he was visited by hundreds of couples who agreed with him that Claudius the Cruel’s decree was terrible.

While he was awaiting execution, the daughter of his jailor was blinded by a disease and Valentinus was able to cure her. Hence, she fell in love with Valentinus. However, being the chaste man that he was and since he was about to die, he couldn’t marry the young lady even in the wake of her intense longing.

On the day of his scheduled execution, he sent her a note which he signed:

“With Love from your Valentine!”

Shortly thereafter, the good priest Valentinus was beaten and decapitated. In 496 A.D., Pope Gelasius declared Valentinus a Saint and urged that every February fourteenth be celebrated as a day of romance thus superseding Lupercalia.

In America, the root of Valentine’s Day is commercial rather than either religious or legendary! The mother of modern Valentine’s Day was Esther Howland of Worcester, Massachusetts. Born in 1828, Miss Howland graduated from Mount Holyoke Female Academy in 1847. About that time, she received a Valentine from a friend in Britain which she decided she could reproduce as well if not even better than the one she’d been sent. Her father, who owned a book and stationary store in Worcester, ordered some lace paper and Esther put together some samples for the catalogue that was being made up by the store.

It was Esther’s hope to get about two hundred orders once her brother had distributed the catalogue, but she ended up with the unbelievable number of over five thousand orders. She first advertised her Valentines as messages of romance in the Daily Spy, a local newspaper, on February 5, 1850. By the time she sold the business, Esther Howland was quite a rich lady. Miss Howland wasn’t the first person to send a valentine, but she certainly was the major force that popularized the valentine in increasingly commercial America. Esther Howland died in 1904 at the age of seventy-six -- believe it or not -- a maiden.

Love doesn’t always prevail on February fourteenth. For example, if you were one of seven members or associates of Bugs Moran’s North Side Chicago gang, Al Capone would deliver a deadly Valentine to you that Thursday, February 14, 1929. Those machine and shotgun blasts you felt pumped into your heart in that Chicago garage may have come from Al’s heart, but they could hardly have been received as a symbol of Al’s love!

For most of us, Valentine’s Day has been pretty lovely. February 14, 1859 and 1912 saw the admission into our union of the states of Oregon and Arizona as the thirty-third and forty-eighth states respectively. Comedian Jack Benny was born on Valentine’s Day in 1894. In addition, the first plane load of American prisoners of war from North Vietnam arrived in California on Valentine’s Day 1973.

Can you recall a favorite valentine card from childhood? I can: it was in the shape of a dump truck and it was sent to me by my foster brother Danny. Its message was simple:

“Here’s a load of love for you on Valentine’s Day.”

No, it certainly wasn’t romantic, but it came from the only person who has ever considered me to be his brother. Thus I’ll carry the memory of that valentine for the rest of my life!

Not all love is erotic, feverish, or romantic, nor should it be--but it is something else quite special.

Love is definitely what makes Valentine’s Day!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY