Hand-spun Holidays: Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day!

We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love. ~Author Unknown

Although over over one billion dollars are spent on chocolate each Valentine's, the depth and meaning of the holiday do not center around the consumption of sweets. Let's take some time to reflect on the history of the holiday and see if we can re-center ourselves for an old-fashion valentine's day in the midst of the marketing mania that we are expose to everyday.

History of the Holiday
Valentine's Day, the mid-winter celebration of love, is named for St. Valentine's. In all his incarnations (and there are many), St. Valentine is a champion of true love and courtship, a Christian who gave holy sanction to ancient Roman rites honoring romance and fertility. Those rites, dating back to long before Christ's time, originally paid tribute to the Roman crop god, Faunus, whose festival of Lupercalia was on February 15. On Lupercalia Eve, Roman youths would draw virgins' names from an urn, then squire their chosen maiden for the fete. The boys and girls who were matched through the drawing would be considered partners for the year, which began in March. The early Roman men often wore the names of the girls who were to be their partners during the Lupercalia pinned to their sleeves leading to the saying "he wears his heart upon his sleeve". When Christianity became the official religion of Rome in the fourth century, church fathers incorporated Lupercalia into the Christian calendar as St. Valentine's Day.

However, was there an actual man named Valentine? One legend suggests he was a third-century priest who defied Emperor Claudius II. Rome had been involved in many bloody and unpopular wars and Claudius the Cruel, as he was known, was having a difficult time getting soldiers to join the military. He believed the reason was because Roman men didn't want to leave their loves or families. As a result, Claudius cancelled all marriages and engagements in Rome. According to legend, Valentine performed secret marriages for soldiers and their sweethearts until he was discovered and put to death on February 14 in the year 270.


How did this festival of pagan ritual and clandestine love turn into a holiday of gifts and cards? Sometimes during the festival of Lupercalia, the paired couple exchanged presents. Ladies often received perfumed gloves or fine jewels. Later, people began to exchange valentine cards instead of presents. The Duke of Orleans is believed to have made the first valentine card. Imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1415, he wrote love poems, or valentines," to his wife in France. Sweethearts exchanged handmade cards during the 17th and 18th centuries. The French trimmed huge paper hearts with yards of real lace. During the Victorian era, advances in printing technology made possible mass production of elaborate cards. In a repressive culture that discouraged direct expressions of love, the availability of cards set off a spree: Sweethearts began to buy cards for each other on a scale unprecedented for any correspondence item in history. It was in 1861 that Richard Cadbury created the heart-shaped candy box for Valentine's Day. Simultaneously, Valentine cards became popular in the United States during the Civil War as elaborate cards trimmed with satin ribbons, mother-of-pearl ornaments, and spun glass were sold.

Symbols of Valentine's Day
The colors of Valentine's Day are pink, red, and white. Pink is a delicate, almost innocent shade of red. Pink also was connected with St. Valentine, whose burial caused the pink almond tree to blossom. Red is a symbol of warmth and feeling, the color of the heart. White stands for purity and faith: a faith between two that love each other. The red heart is an old symbol for love. Centuries ago, people did not know that the heart pumps blood through the circulatory system. However, they did know that the heart beats faster when a person is excited or upset. For this reason they believed that the heart was the center of our feelings. This idea remains today in certain sayings, such as, "It does my heart good," or "I'm broken-hearted," or "sick at heart."

Ribbons and frills have been associated with romance since the days of knighthood when a knight rode into battle with a ribbon or scarf given him by his lady fair. The dictionary states that the word "Lace" comes from a Latin word meaning to "snare" or "noose".

Cupid is often a figure depicted on Valentine's day cards due to his role in the Roman and Greek myths of love. Cupid (Gk. name is Eros) was the son of Venus (Gk. name is Aphrodite) the Roman and Greek goddess of love. In the Roman and Greek myths Cupid is always a youth, never a fat baby with wings. He possessed a bow with a quiver of arrows. When he shot the arrow into someone's heart, that person fell in love. Usually his mother would be the one who sent him on such errands. In Latin, the word Cupid means "desire." Cupid is typically represented as a chubby, naked, winged boy or youth with a mischievous smile. Cherubs are descendants of Cupid. They are depicted as lovable little winged creatures without arrows and quivers. Cherubs were typically not mischievous like Cupid.

Roses have endured as the traditional flower of Valentine's Day, and perhaps we also owe that to the Romans. In legend, a woman, Rodanthe, was pursued by many suitors who finally became so impassioned they broke down the doors of her house. This enraged the goddess Diana, who turned the woman into a flower and her suitors each into a thorn. The rose, which is undoubtedly the most popular flower in the world, speaks of love and has been the choice of lovers in every century. If you rearrange the letters of the word rose you get Eros, the god of Love. The color of roses are also important. White roses are for true love and purity of the mind. Red roses are for love and passion. Yellow roses are for friendship. Pink roses mean friendship or sweetheart.

It was a popular belief in the olden times that the birds chose their mates on 14th of February. Doves and pigeons mate for life and therefore were used as a symbol of "fidelity."


Handmade Valentine's
Going back to a simpler way of life, before the ornate opulence of the Victorian era, gifts and presents were handmade. Children are natural creators and gifts made by them are truly unique and heart-felt. Creating a present by hand forces us to slow down and focus on the person who will be receiving it, and the care and energy that goes into creating such a gift tells the recipient they were thought about individually and with love By taking the time to make gifts, we show children that we value others and that they are worth spending the time it takes to make those gifts. Later this weekend I will be posting 50 simple ideas for a heart-felt, hand-spun holiday.

Valentine's Day Graphics created by Country Patch Collections: