Something/Someone Old

Happy St. Valentine's Day!

In the 400s, Pope Gelasius named the 14th of February the feast of St. Valentine. Who was Valentine? Well, there are a few Valentines who were Christian martyrs, or at least there is more than one who has stories told about him.

There's this guy:

One legend contends that Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret.

And then there's this guy:

Other stories suggest that Valentine may have been killed for attempting to help Christians escape harsh Roman prisons, where they were often beaten and tortured. According to one legend, an imprisoned Valentine actually sent the first “valentine” greeting himself after he fell in love with a young girl–possibly his jailor’s daughter–who visited him during his confinement. Before his death, it is alleged that he wrote her a letter signed “From your Valentine,” an expression that is still in use today.

However, as this column has so often discussed (heh), the saint was imposed on top of an Older pagan holiday. In this case, it was Lupercalia:

Celebrated at the ides of February, or February 15, Lupercalia was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus.

To begin the festival, members of the Luperci, an order of Roman priests, would gather at a sacred cave where the infants Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were believed to have been cared for by a she-wolf or lupa. The priests would sacrifice a goat, for fertility, and a dog, for purification. They would then strip the goat’s hide into strips, dip them into the sacrificial blood and take to the streets, gently slapping both women and crop fields with the goat hide. Far from being fearful, Roman women welcomed the touch of the hides because it was believed to make them more fertile in the coming year. Later in the day, according to legend, all the young women in the city would place their names in a big urn. The city’s bachelors would each choose a name and become paired for the year with his chosen woman. These matches often ended in marriage.

I think I'd rather get some candy and flowers.

Lupercalia was outlawed at the same time Gelasius instituted St. Valentine's Day, so, uh, I think the Vatican was being pretty obvious here.

It was the Middle Ages, particularly in France and England, that brought us a more modern conception of the day:

During the Middle Ages, it was commonly believed in France and England that February 14 was the beginning of birds’ mating season, which added to the idea that the middle of Valentine’s Day should be a day for romance.

Valentine greetings were popular as far back as the Middle Ages, though written Valentine’s didn’t begin to appear until after 1400. The oldest known valentine still in existence today was a poem written in 1415 by Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London following his capture at the Battle of Agincourt.

Something New

I don't usually pay attention to celebrities' love lives, but I'm so highly impressed with the work of everyone in 13 Reasons Why, and Brandon Flynn's in particular, that I thought I'd celebrate his coming out--and public kiss of Sam Smith. Incredible work playing Justin, Mr. Flynn--you made him one of the most complex characters in the show. Cool pin, too.

https://www.popsugar.com/celebrity/New-Celebrity-Couples-2017-43172690

Something Borrowed

I'm not going to repeat myself about Lupercalia. Let's look for something else Borrowed about this holiday...

Apparently Poland didn't have a St. Valentine's Day, per se, until after the Berlin Wall fell. At that point, they borrowed Valentine's Day from the West. Here's a fascinating bit of history and culture from a Romanian lady in Poland:

When you think about Valentine's Day, you mostly think about the USA and the postcards with hearts popping all over... you would not say this is a typical Polish tradition. I am coming from an ex-communist country - just like Poland was - and I know how ones the curtain fell we were dead set upon the task of assimilating as much as we could from America and it's way of life. The young ones welcomed Valentine's Day with arms wide open.

Of course we always had celebrations for Women's Day (on the 8th of March) and in Romania we actually have a traditional celebration for couples, called Dragobete (celebrated, if I remember right, on the 24th of February) but as far as I know and asked Polish people, they did not have a similar tradition. It was, of course, "borrowed".

Now, in Poland, Valentine's Day is celebrated on the 14th of February and the day is named "Walentynki" (after the Saint that gave the celebration it's name). Opened on the 30th of September 2010, Kraków prides itself with a Lovers Bridge - Kladka Ojca Bernatka (Father Bernatka's Bridge). The bridge links the Kazimierz and the Podgorze district of Kraków and spans over the Vistula river, providing wonderful views. The bridge is all pedestrian (bikes are allowed) and the couples like to "show the world" their love by putting love locks on it and throwing the key in the river. Some locks are engraved with name and date, and they come in all shapes and sizes.
http://twistedredladybug.blogspot.com/2016/02/do-polish-people-celebrate...

That is a pretty damned cool custom for a borrowed holiday. I gotta hand it to the Polish.

Something Blue

I seriously disliked this movie when it came out. I was twelve, and already aiming somewhere between the sensibilities of a hippie and a goth girl. I guess that would be a beatnik? Too bad they no longer existed when I showed up.

Anyway, I was not into teen romance movies nor into weird kids-coming-into-their-sexuality-oddly-because-of-strange-circumstances stories--Flowers in the Attic was not a favorite of mine. So I never actually went to see this:

The song didn't help. I actually really like both Diana Ross and Lionel Ritchie, but I was just not, not into this song in early high school:

But I'm older now, and hopefully have grown beyond the prejudices of my thirteen-year-old self. I actually like the song better now. So maybe I should give the movie a try?

Happy Valentine's, all! And a special shout-out to the single folks out there. I was one of you for about 36 years, and I remember how I felt on this day. Celebrate yourselves today. Do something awesome. You don't have to be attached to be kickass.