“Will you be my Valentine?”
One of my most vivid childhood memories involves Valentine’s Day. I remember sitting at my school desk making a heart-shaped folder out of thick red construction paper and in my unsteady childish handwriting, carefully placing my name on it.
I remember the smell of the glue as I decorated mine with cut out hearts and butterflies, making sure the stapled opening was big enough to receive all the Valentine’s cards I hoped to get that year.
The teacher had us all attach our folders to strings across the front of the classroom – a long row of hearts in various shapes and sizes – our personal love letter mailboxes.
Then we would sit at our desks and fill out the Valentine’s Day cards we wanted to give away. My Mom would send me to school with a set of those small cards with old fashioned girls holding a heart saying “Be Mine” or Cupid in some form of fancy flight, his arrow aimed tried and true at a lace-trimmed red pulsing heart.
I chose mine carefully, thinking long and hard about who should receive which message of love. My seven-year old heart crushing on a boy I regularly showed my affection for by ignoring him in the school playground. My Cupid was saved for him.
Of course all the cards were anonymous. That was the thrill of it all. You never signed you name. You just counted how many you got – a sure sign of your popularity.
We placed our small, sealed envelopes in each person’s Valentine’s folder and waited patiently for Valentine’s Day.
I remember making sure I wore one of my best dresses on this special day – arriving in class with flutters of anticipation in my stomach, the teacher passing out heart-shaped cupcakes and candies.
Then the moment arrived. We were allowed to open our folders. I emptied the contents onto my desk. A veritable bounty that year, and carefully opened each envelope.
The colourful cards piled high on my desk until I opened one special one. It was Cupid. The same one I had put in my secret crush’s envelope. I looked up in time to catch his eye. His soft smile confirmed what I already knew. It was from him: my secret Valentine. The thrill of that moment stayed with me – the knowledge that small gestures of affection can bring such joy to others.
And a lifelong love for Valentine’s Day was born.
Who was Saint Valentine?
I have another reason to love Valentine’s Day. Saint Valentine himself was born here in Umbria, not far from Paciano. He’s something of a medieval hero in these parts.
He was born in nearby Terni in the third century and went on to become the Bishop of Terni at the age of 21. It seems that aside from his spiritual calling San Valentino, as he is known in his homeland, had a thing for romantic love.
The story goes that during the reign of Emperor Claudius II, Rome was involved in several bloody and unpopular campaigns. Claudius found it tough to get soldiers to commit to the cause, blaming their devotion to wives and family as the main reason.
It seemed these romantic Roman men didn’t want to hit the road for months and years at a time and leave their wives behind. Cold-hearted Claudius was having none of it. He outlawed marriage for young men in hopes they would transfer their passion to the fight.
This is where to the tale of two Valentine’s converge. Legend has it there was another Valentine, a priest in Rome who stepped in to save the day. Other accounts claim it was Terni’s Bishop Valentine who intervened. Either way, it was a man named Valentine who defied Claudius’s decree and secretly wed young Roman men to their sweethearts, in many cases before they then headed out to war.
When Valentine’s actions were discovered, Claudius ordered he be put to death. Adding to the identity confusion, apparently both Valentines, the priest in Rome and Terni’s bishop, were beheaded by Claudius around February 14th 270 AD.
History of Valentine’s Day
Other theories abound as to why Terni’s San Valentino is associated with romantic love going as far back as the middle ages. Folks back then knew that birds began pairing up in preparation for mating season around the middle of February. Seemed a good time to write love letters or give gifts to one’s mate in hopes of a romance-filled spring of their own. San Valentino’s feast day on February 14th happened to coincide with the lovesick time of the year so it’s possible he came by the association with romantic love in a more random way.
However history records it, the middle of February has long been a time associated with love. The English poet Geoffrey Chaucer was the first to record St. Valentine’s Day as a day of romantic celebration in his 1375 poem “Parliament of Foules”:
For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne’s day / Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate.
Despite the passing of 1750 years since San Valentino’s death, the town of Terni is steadfast in its belief that they own Valentine’s Day. Not only are the remains of the saint enshrined in Terni’s Basilica San Valentino, the town also holds a month-long festival dedicated to romantic love.
Thousands of couples visit Terni each year to have their union blessed. This year they are expecting 100,000 visitors. Officials in Terni say its time this claim to fame put them on the international map.
This year, Terni’s head of tourism declared a search to find a romantic sister city in the U.S. “Every year the whole world celebrates Valentine’s Day, but nobody is linking Valentine to his hometown Terni,” he said.
“Every year, cities across Italy claim they are the most romantic, or that they are the city of love,” he said. “But actually, Terni is the real deal – it is the birthplace of Saint Valentine.”
World’s Oldest Valentine
According to one legend, it was San Valentino himself who wrote the first Valentine. While imprisoned for conducting secret marriages, he supposedly 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 used today.
The oldest existing Valentine card is believed to be housed in the manuscript collection of the British Library. In 1415, Charles, duke of Orléans, gave his wife a valentine while being held prisoner in the Tower of London. The French nobleman was wounded and captured at the Battle of Agincourt during the Hundred Year’s War.
The valentine poem Charles wrote his wife was not the typical happy-go-lucky valentine. It was of somber yearning as shown in this excerpt:
Je suis desja d’amour tanné
Ma tres doulce Valentinée…
I am already sick of love
My very gentle Valentine…
The duchess died before the poem could reach her. Over the duke’s 25-year imprisonment, he wrote his wife 60 love poems that are often said to have been the first “valentines.”
Here is the entire poem – first in French and then translated into English:
Je suis desja d’amour tanné,
Ma tres doulce Valentinée,
Car pour moi fustes trop tart née,
Et moy pour vous fus trop tost né.
Dieu lui pardoint qui estrené
M’a de vous, pour toute l’année.
Je suis desja d’amour tanné,
Ma tres doulce Valentinée
Bien m’estoye suspeconné,
Qu’auroye telle destinée,
Ains que passast ceste journée,
Combien qu’Amours l’eust ordonné.
Je suis desja d’amour tanné,
Ma tres doulce Valentinée.
I am already sick of love,
My very gentle Valentine,
Since for me you were born too soon,
And I for you was born too late.
God forgives him who has estranged
Me from you for the whole year.
I am already sick of love,
My very gentle Valentine.
Well might I have suspected
That such a destiny,
Thus would have happened this day,
How much that Love would have commanded.
I am already sick of love,
My very gentle Valentine.
Mother of the Valentine
Americans probably began exchanging hand-made valentines in the early 1700s. It was common for friends and lovers of all social classes to exchange small tokens of affection or handwritten notes, and by 1900 printed cards began to replace written letters due to improvements in printing technology.
In the 1840s, Esther Howland began selling the first mass-produced valentines in America, earning her the nickname the “Mother of the Valentine”. Esther made elaborate creations with real lace, ribbons and colourful pictures that far surpassed any of the mass-produced cards we find these days.
Today, according to the American Greeting Card Association, an estimated 145 million Valentine’s Day cards are sent each year, making Valentine’s Day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year after Christmas.
However you chose to celebrate this day of romantic love, I hope it involves chocolate, lots of hand-holding, a few stolen kisses, and did I mention chocolate?
And yes I know every day should be romantic and we perhaps shouldn’t isolate one day of the year to say ‘this is the day we celebrate love’. But I also know I should cut down on carbs and try to keep aperitivo hour to well, just one hour. None of this is likely to happen so let’s just accept that after 700 years of so, maybe Valentine’s Day is here to stay.
And if that means another little girl will one day in the future put on her best dress and with butterflies in her stomach, open a special valentine given to her by her young beloved then what’s so wrong with that?
Happy Valentine’s Day!! Buon San Valentino
A presto
Anna
