worldculturenet.com

Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day is a holiday dedicated to love and romance in many cultures. It is a good day to get engaged, plan a specially romantic date, buy chocolates or flowers for your sweetheart, or simply “give a valentine” to your friends. Many schoolchildren exchange Valentines with their class mates, which can be home-made cards or heart-shaped greetings.

Valentine’s Day has its origins in the Roman Empire. The Emperor Claudius II was engaged in many unpopular military campaigns and was having a hard time recruiting soldiers. In order to discourage men from staying home with their sweethearts, he cancelled all marriages and engagements in Rome. A Christian priest named Valentine defied the Emperor’s orders, secretly marrying couples illegally. He was sent to prison, where he died on February 14, 270. Eventually, Valentine was canonized by the Church, which then encouraged people to replace the pagan fertility festival Lupercalia with a Saint’s Day in Valentine’s honor.

A Feast of Wolves and Birds
Lupercalia was celebrated on February 15 in honor of the god Lupercus, who was said to watch over the shepherds and their flocks and keep them safe from the wolves that roamed the outskirts or Rome. During the festivities, men would draw women’s names from a box, and each couple would be paired until next year’s celebration.

When the Church substituted Saint Valentine’s Day for the Lupercalia celebrations, they tried to convince young men to draw the name of a Saint instead of the name of a young woman; the youth was supposed to then emulate the life of the saint whose name he had drawn. Strangely, the Church was unsuccessful in changing the tradition of selecting lovers as Valentine’s.

Perhaps this is because Europeans believed that February 14 was also the day that birds began to choose their mates. In England, boys continued to emulate the birds and, when drawing a girl’s name, would pin it to his sleeve – “wearing his heart on his sleeve.”

The French advanced the holiday by allowing both sexes to draw names from the valentine box. Young maids and bachelors would each write the names of their loves on small papers, put them into boxes, and then draw billets from the boxes. Despite the fact that the girl may have drawn a different name from the boy who chose hers, they somehow managed to sort themselves into couples, with the young men giving dances and treats to their valentines, and wearing their names on their bosoms or sleeves for several days.

Click to read about Valentine’s Day traditions in Japan and Korea.

Popularity: 3% [?]