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How Valentine's Day works |
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Written by Marshall Brain, MCT
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Tuesday, 13 February 2007 |
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Valentine's Day is nigh, and it is a huge event in the United States. How huge is it?
It is so huge that Americans will send nearly 200 million Valentine's Day cards to each other. (And that doesn't count the billion little Scooby-Doo and Spongebob cards that kids give to each other at school.) Then there's the tons of chocolate we give each other, the millions of bouquets. ... We will collectively spend over $13 billion celebrating Valentine's Day this year.
That's a lot of money. It's about $100 for every household in America.
So how did this holiday get started? Why do we set aside a day for romance on February 14? It turns out that Valentine's Day is an ancient tradition, and the whole thing is absolutely fascinating.
First of all, we need to understand where the tradition began. To do that, we need to ride the Wayback machine all the way back to something like 300 BC. Here we find the Romans celebrating a pagan festival called Lupercalia. This feast occurred on February 14 and 15. During this festival there was a very interesting lottery. Women would write their names on cards that they would put into an urn. Men would pull a card at random from the urn, and then try to find and pair up with the woman who wrote the card.
As Rome converted to Christianity, this pagan festival became a sore spot. So, in 496 AD, Pope Gelasius I declared that February 14 would be a holy day set aside to honor Saint Valentine, the patron saint of lovers. This Christian festival basically absorbed the pagan festival. The holy day survived on the Catholic feast calendar up through 1969, when Pope Paul VI retired it.
What about Valentine's Day cards? Obviously they got their start all the way back in early Rome. But the idea has been reinforced at several spots in history. For example, Saint Valentine was beheaded in 270 AD. His crime: he was a Christian and a priest, and he was secretly holding marriage ceremonies for Roman soldiers. Emperor Claudius II did not like this idea, because he felt that single men were more likely to join the army. Right before he was beheaded for this crime, Valentine sent a letter to his friend, the jailer's daughter, signed, "From your Valentine." He was executed on February 14, and people have been writing "From your Valentine" in his honor ever since.
In America, the first commercial Valentine's Day cards came from a woman named Esther Howland in 1840. She sold $5,000 in cards in her first year (something close to $100,000 in today's dollars). In 1915, Joyce Hall stepped things up a notch. Joyce was the Nebraska teenager who founded Hallmark, and 1915 was the first year she sold Valentine's Day cards. What was the major innovation that put her at the head of the pack? Her cards came with envelopes, so they were easy to send in the mail.
What about the flowers? The whole flower thing really took off in the 1700s. Charles II of Sweden popularized "the language of flowers." In this "language", every flower has a special meaning. Daisies represent innocence. Pink carnations mean, "I'll never forget you." And then there is the red rose, which means "I love you." The number of roses also has meaning in this language. Ten roses, for example, means "You are perfect", while 12 means "Be Mine" and 24 means, "Forever yours." This language has echoed through the centuries, and today we still follow it on February 14.
Then there is cupid, that cute little kid who flies around shooting arrows at people. Where in the world did he come from? Cupid also comes to us from the Romans. In Roman mythology, Cupid is the son of Venus, who is the goddess of love. His arrows would cause people to fall in love. Apparently this legend is so convincing that it has survived for thousands of years.
And don't forget Chocolate. Cadbury's led the way, creating the first heart-shaped box o' chocolate in the 1860s. The Cadbury brothers were marketing geniuses, and they may have single-handedly started the chocolate/Valentine's connection. And those little candy hearts with words on them come from the New England Confectionary Company, aka Necco, which first made them in 1902.
Now when you go out to blow $100 this Valentine's day, at least you'll know why you are doing it! | Only registered users can write comments.
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