Send this to someone you have been so afraid to tell!!! Or print it out and stick it in someone's mailbox
(Another lil preview of our summer collection coming this april, starring Valerie Van Der Graaf)
The first recorded association of Valentine's Day with romantic love is in Parlement of Foules (1382) by Geoffrey Chaucer.[25] Chaucer wrote:
For this was on seynt Volantynys day
Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make.
["For this was on Saint Valentine's Day, when every bird cometh there to choose his mate."]
This poem was written to honor the first anniversary of the engagement of King Richard II of England to Anne of Bohemia.[34] A treaty providing for a marriage was signed on May 2, 1381.[35] (When they were married eight months later, they were each only 15 years old).
Readers have uncritically assumed that Chaucer was referring to February 14 as Valentine's Day; however, mid-February is an unlikely time for birds to be mating in England. Henry Ansgar Kelly has pointed out that Chaucer could be referring to May 3, the celebration in the liturgical calendar of Valentine of Genoa, an early bishop of Genoa who died around AD 307.[34][36][37] Jack B. Oruch says that date for the start of Spring has changed since Chaucer's time due to precession of equinoxes and the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in 1582. The weather would correspond to the modern 23 February, a time when some birds have started mating and nesting in England.[25]
Chaucer's Parliament of Foules is set in a fictional context of an old tradition, but in fact there was no such tradition before Chaucer. The speculative explanation of sentimental customs, posing as historical fact, had their origins among 18th-century antiquaries, notably Alban Butler, the author of Butler's Lives of Saints, and have been perpetuated even by respectable modern scholars. Most notably, "the idea that Valentine's Day customs perpetuated those of the Roman Lupercalia has been accepted uncritically and repeated, in various forms, up to the present".[20][38]
There were other three authors who made poems about birds mating in Saint Valentine's Day around the same years: Otton de Grandson from Savoy, John Gower from England, and a knight called Pardo from Valencia. Chaucer most probably predated all of them, but, due to the difficulty of dating medieval works, we can't know for sure who of the four had the idea first and influenced the others.[39]
Medieval period and the English Renaissance
Using the language of the law courts for the rituals of courtly love, a "High Court of Love" was probably established by princess Isabel of Bavaria in Paris in 1400. It was founded on 6 January, the festivity of a Bavarian Saint Valentin, with The Charter of the Court of Love.[40] The court dealt with love contracts, betrayals, and violence against women. Judges were selected by women on the basis of a poetry reading.[40][41][42] It was probably based on the poems of Grandson, and not on the poems of Chaucer.[40] It is possible that the actual Court never existed and that it was all an invention of the princess.[40]
The earliest surviving valentine is a 15th-century rondeau written by Charles, Duke of Orléans to his wife, which commences.
Je suis desja d'amour tanné
Ma tres doulce Valentinée...—Charles d'Orléans, Rondeau VI, lines 1–2[43]
At the time, the duke was being held in the Tower of London following his capture at the Battle of Agincourt, 1415.[44]
The earliest surviving valentines in English appear to be those in the Paston Letters, written in 1477 by Margery Brewes to her future husband John Paston "my right well-beloved Valentine".[45]
Valentine's Day is mentioned ruefully by Ophelia in Hamlet (1600–1601):
To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day,
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your Valentine.
Then up he rose, and donn'd his clothes,
And dupp'd the chamber-door;
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more.—William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 5
John Donne used the legend of the marriage of the birds as the starting point for his Epithalamion celebrating the marriage of Elizabeth, daughter of James I of England, and Frederick V, Elector Palatine on Valentine's Day:
Hayle Bishop Valentine whose day this is
All the Ayre is thy Diocese
And all the chirping Queristers
And other birds ar thy parishioners
Thou marryest every yeare
The Lyrick Lark, and the graue whispering Doue,
The Sparrow that neglects his life for loue,
The houshold bird with the redd stomacher
Thou makst the Blackbird speede as soone,
As doth the Goldfinch, or the Halcyon
The Husband Cock lookes out and soone is spedd
And meets his wife, which brings her feather-bed.
This day more cheerfully than ever shine
This day which might inflame thy selfe old Valentine.—John Donne, Epithalamion Vpon Frederick Count Palatine and the Lady Elizabeth marryed on St. Valentines day
The verse Roses are red echoes conventions traceable as far back as Edmund Spenser's epic The Faerie Queene (1590):
She bath'd with roses red, and violets blew,
And all the sweetest flowres, that in the forrest grew.[46]
The modern cliché Valentine's Day poem can be found in the collection of English nursery rhymes Gammer Gurton's Garland (1784):
The rose is red, the violet's blue,
The honey's sweet, and so are you.
Thou art my love and I am thine;
I drew thee to my Valentine:
The lot was cast and then I drew,
And Fortune said it shou'd be you.[47][48]
Modern times
In 1797, a British publisher issued The Young Man's Valentine Writer, which contained scores of suggested sentimental verses for the young lover unable to compose his own. Printers had already begun producing a limited number of cards with verses and sketches, called "mechanical valentines," and a reduction in postal rates in the next century ushered in the less personal but easier practice of mailing Valentines. That, in turn, made it possible for the first time to exchange cards anonymously, which is taken as the reason for the sudden appearance of racy verse in an era otherwise prudishly Victorian.[49]
Paper Valentines became so popular in England in the early 19th century that they were assembled in factories. Fancy Valentines were made with real lace and ribbons, with paper lace introduced in the mid-19th century.[50] The reinvention of Saint Valentine's Day in the 1840s has been traced by Leigh Eric Schmidt.[51] As a writer in Graham's American Monthly observed in 1849, "Saint Valentine's Day... is becoming, nay it has become, a national holyday."[52] In the United States, the first mass-produced valentines of embossed paper lace were produced and sold shortly after 1847 by Esther Howland (1828–1904) of Worcester, Massachusetts.[53][54]
Her father operated a large book and stationery store, but Howland took her inspiration from an English Valentine she had received from a business associate of her father.[55][56] Intrigued with the idea of making similar Valentines, Howland began her business by importing paper lace and floral decorations from England.[56][57] The English practice of sending Valentine's cards was established enough to feature as a plot device in Elizabeth Gaskell's Mr. Harrison's Confessions (1851): "I burst in with my explanations: '"The valentine I know nothing about." '"It is in your handwriting", said he coldly.[58] Since 2001, the Greeting Card Association has been giving an annual "Esther Howland Award for a Greeting Card Visionary."[54]s Candy
Since the 19th century, handwritten notes have given way to mass-produced greeting cards.[11] In the UK, just under half of the population spend money on their Valentines and around 1.3 billion pounds are spent yearly on cards, flowers, chocolates and other gifts, with an estimated 25 million cards being sent.[59] The mid-19th century Valentine's Day trade was a harbinger of further commercialized holidays in the United States to follow.[60]
In the second half of the 20th century, the practice of exchanging cards was extended to all manner of gifts. Such gifts typically include roses and chocolates packed in a red satin, heart-shaped box. In the 1980s, the diamond industry began to promote Valentine's Day as an occasion for giving jewelry.
The U.S. Greeting Card Association estimates that approximately 190 million valentines are sent each year in the US. Half of those valentines are given to family members other than husband or wife, usually to children. When you include the valentine-exchange cards made in school activities the figure goes up to 1 billion, and teachers become the people receiving the most valentines.[53]
The rise of Internet popularity at the turn of the millennium is creating new traditions. Millions of people use, every year, digital means of creating and sending Valentine's Day greeting messages such as e-cards, love coupons or printable greeting cards. An estimated 15 million e-valentines were sent in 2010.[53] Valentine's Day is considered by some to be a Hallmark holiday due to its commercialization