A Day of Romance

A Canadian Valentines

Valentine's Day in Canada, was, and still is, celebrated in much the same way as anywhere else, though we did put our own spin on some of the traditions.

Before schools began holding Valentine's Day parties, which were sometimes painful for the unpopular, the young people would get together in someones's home on the eve of St. Valentine's Day and celebrate in a feast which was a "symbol of the renewal of nature and the inborn desire of all living beings to perpetuate their kind". The boys and girls then gathered together and wrote their names on individual bits of paper. These were rolled up and drawn from a hat; the girls picking from the boys' names and vice versa. Thus each boy meets a girl whom he calls "valentine" and each girl a boy whom she calls her "valentin."

A variation on the theme involved only the single young women, who would write all the potential suitors names on a slip of paper, roll each into a little piece of clay, and then drop them all into water. The first paper that rose to the surface was the name of her true love.

Or if Cupid needed a little nudge, you could make your own charm, by pinning a bay leaf to each corner of your pillow.  If successful, you would see your future husband in your dreams.

An English custom was for unmarried women to get up before sunrise on Valentine's Day, and stand by the window watching for a man to pass. The first man they see, or someone who looks like him, will marry them within a year. William Shakespeare,  mentions this belief in Hamlet (1603). Ophelia, a woman in the play, sings:

Good morrow! 'Tis St. Valentine's Day All in the morning betime, And I a maid at your window, To be your valentine!

A Brief  History of Valentine's Day

As of yet, no one has been able to exactly pinpoint the origins of Valentine's Day, but most agree that it began with the ancient Romans.  Loosely connected to the  festival of Lupercalia, which was held on February 15 to ensure protection from wolves; the earliest celebrations were in honour of fertility, not romance.  During Lupercalia, young men struck people with strips of animal hide, and women were especially eager to take the blows, because they thought that the whipping made them more fertile. St. Valentine, himself, was said to be a priest living in Rome in the third century.  At the time, Emperor Claudius II, forbade young men to marry, feeling that single men made better soldiers. However, Valentine disobeyed the order and secretly married young couples anyway.

As a result, he was thrown into prison, but was so loved by the people, that they would toss loving notes between the bars of his cell window, beginning the tradition of exchanging messages on Valentine's Day.

He was executed on February 14 about A.D. 269 and two centuries later Saint Pope Gelasius I, named February 14 as St. Valentine's Day.

We know that they were celebrating Valentine's Day as early as the fourteenth century in Britain.  The poet  Geoffrey Chaucer, wrote in The Parliament of Fowls, "For this was on St. Valentine's Day, When every fowl cometh there to choose his mate." Shakespeare also mentioned this belief in A Midsummer Night's Dream. A character in the play discovers two lovers in the woods and asks, "St. Valentine is past;  Begin these woodbirds but to couple now?" Some historians trace the custom of sending verses on Valentine's Day to a Frenchman named Charles, Duke of Orleans; who was captured by the English during the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. He was taken to England and put in prison. On Valentine's Day, he sent his wife a rhymed love letter from his cell in the Tower of London.

But no matter how the custom of giving Valentine Cards started, by the Victorian Era, it reached new heights, as everyone scrambled to send out and receive as many as possible.  Originally, most were handmade, but you could buy handbooks known as 'valentine writers', which included verses to copy and various suggestions about writing the most effective messages. By the early nineteenth century, commercial cards were available, many featuring  charming pictures of happy children and beautiful gardens. The same rules applied as to proprieties and improprieties, with regards to what messages to send to whom, and flowers were selected under the guidelines of the "Language of Flowers'.  However, Cupids and hearts were the main theme.

Some featured a fat cupid or showed arrows piercing a heart. Many cards had satin, ribbon, or lace trim. Others were decorated with dried flowers, feathers, imitation jewels, mother-of-pearl, sea shells, or tassels; costing as much as ten dollars, even then.

From the mid-1800's to the early 1900's, many people sent comic valentines called 'penny dreadfuls', because they sold for a penny and featured such insulting verses as:

'Tis all in vain your simpering looks, You never can incline, With all your bustles, stays, and curls, To find a valentine.

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