Valentine's Day

Today is Valentine's Day!  The day on which we celebrate love and especially romantic love. This day is linked to Greco-Roman February holidays devoted to fertility, in particular, the festival of Lupercalia. The romantic overtone of the holiday is in commemoration of St. Valentine, a Roman priest who was martyred on February 14 in 269 A.D. It's worth noting that there are many different Christian martyrs named "Valentine," and until 1969, the Catholic Church recognized 11 different Valentine's days.

For Valentine's Day every February florists in the United States import several million pounds of roses from South America. About thirty-six million boxes of chocolates will be given as gifts today.
The holiday comes, in part, from the ancient Romans' holiday honoring Juno, the goddess of women and marriage, on the night before the Feast of Lupercalia. Roman girls would put slips of paper with their names on them into a clay jar, and the boys would choose their partner for the festival by taking a slip from the jar. This was one of the few times girls and boys were allowed to socialize, and the dancing and games often evolved into courtship and marriage.
Tradition has it that Valentine's Day as we know it began sometime in the middle of the third century. Claudius II of Rome was waging several wars and needed to recruit more soldiers for his armies. He thought that many men were reluctant to join because they didn't want to leave their wives and families, and so he temporarily banned engagements and marriages. Saint Valentine was working as a priest at the time and he and his partner Saint Marius broke the law and secretly married couples in small, candlelit rooms, whispering the ceremonial rites. Eventually Saint Valentine was caught and sentenced to death. While awaiting his punishment he would talk with the young daughter of the prison guard whose father allowed her to visit occasionally. Saint Valentine was killed on February 14, 269 A.D., but he had left a note for the guard's daughter, signed, "Love from your Valentine."
Zelda Fitzgerald, the wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, didn't write much literature in her lifetime, just a novel and a few short stories, but some of her letters to her husband read like love poems.
She once wrote: "I look down the tracks and see you coming—and out of every haze and mist your darling rumpled trousers are hurrying to me. Without you, dearest dearest, I couldn't see or hear or feel or think—or live—I love you so, and I'm never in all our lives going to let us be apart another night."

Love Poem

by Donald Hall born 20 November 1928

When you fall in love,
you jockey your horse
into the flaming barn.

You hire a cabin
on the shiny Titanic.
You tease the black bear.

Reading the Monitor,
you scan the obituaries
looking for your name.

The American poet Anne Bradstreet immigrated with her husband to America in 1630. Her husband was a magistrate for the Massachusetts colony, and spent long periods away from home. Anne missed him terribly, and wrote many love poems to him while he was away, including "To My Dear and Loving Husband" (1678). She wrote:
"If ever two were one then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee.
If ever wife were happy in a man,
Compare with me, ye women, if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold
Or all the riches that the East doth hold
My love is such that rivers cannot quench
Nor ought but love from thee, give recompense"