Love is first of crucial elements to Valentine's observations

Love is first of crucial elements to Valentine's observations

By ERIC S. RABKIN

Like love, St. Valentine’s Day means different things to different people. To six of Bugs Moran’s thugs who were machine-gunned behind a garage on that day in 1929, it meant death. Bullets may seem unlikely valentines, but they made some people awfully happy. Thereafter, no gang opposed Al Capone’s control of Chicago’s bootleg liquor and countless actors from the small screen’s “The Untouchables” to the big screen’s “Some Like It Hot” have profited ever since.

The first St. Valentine’s Day victim actually was Valentine himself. In the year 269, Rome’s mad Emperor Claudius II decided that married men made cowardly soldiers because they had a silly desire to return from battle to their wives and children. Using his own crazy logic, Claudius solved this problem by outlawing marriage. But love is unstoppable, so Valentine, Bishop of Interamna near Rome, continued to perform Christian marriages.

When Claudius had Valentine brought to Rome, Valentine tried to convert him, so Claudius had Valentine jailed. Our hero fell in love with the jailer’s blind daughter who, miraculously, regained her sight. Claudius didn’t care. He had Valentine clubbed, stoned and beheaded on Feb. 24, 270. Just before his martyrdom, our bishop left the girl a farewell message signed, “From your Valentine.” Thus the first Valentine card was created and Valentine became the patron saint of marriage.

Now the pagan Romans celebrated a much older holiday called Lupercalia. This fertility festival, begun at least 400 years before the birth of Jesus, honored the demi-god Lupercus, equivalent to the Greek goat-footed, pipe-playing Pan. On Feb. 14, the names of young women were put in a box, goats were sacrificed, and young men, naked except for the skins of those animals, drew names and chased down the women luck assigned them. These couples then shared pleasure, including sexual pleasure, for the ensuing year. It was a very popular festival.

In 496, grim Pope Gelasius decided to end Lupercalia, but knowing Romans adored gambling, he moved Valentine’s feast to Feb. 14 and declared the lottery would now select a saint for emulation. Believe it or not, although saintliness never caught on, the trick worked. Lupercalia disappeared and by the Middle Ages people believed Feb. 14 was the marriage saint’s day because that’s when birds mated for life.

In all cases, there are three crucial elements to St. Valentine’s Day observances. The first, of course, is love, which has meant through the ages anything from sex to miracles to familial tenderness.

Second, there is luck. In the 17th century, Samuel Pepys, in his famous diary, noted how glad he was at a party to draw the name of the hostess’ daughter, “easing me of something more that I must (otherwise) have given to others.” The notion that you must marry the first eligible person you see outside your house on St. Valentine’s Day led some folks in 19th century England to stay indoors, or better yet, arrange to have themselves brought together blindfolded by servants who then gave them the sight of each other.

Third, the Valentine’s sentiment must be private yet at least somewhat formal. An expression of friendship, romance, or passion is necessarily private, but we can formalize it by making it permanent or public, for example by sending a card by messenger. The oldest existing Valentine’s Day card went from the Duke of Orleans, imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1415, to his wife.

These three elements have produced a miracle of commerce. We 250 million Americans buy over a billion Valentine’s Day cards annually (of which about 45 percent are produced by Hallmark). That’s four Valentines for every man, woman and child in the country, not counting hand-made valentines, photocopied valentines, valentine messages in personal columns, cryptic sky writing, flowers, candy or intimate apparel. Clearly, this is still a very popular festival.

So what does St. Valentine’s Day mean to me? It means a pleasant reason to contemplate our complex history and a new way to say, “Hon, it’s been nearly 30 wonderful years and each year I love you more. Will you still be my Valentine?”

Eric S. Rabkin is an English professor at the University of Michigan.

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