This time was considered the best for marriages. In Sussek, the day of lovers is also known as the day of bird weddings. Since Geoffrey Chaucer, an English poet, called this holiday a day when birds choose their own pair, ceremonies were not done without birds.
According to the belief, if an unmarried girl saw a robin on that day, then she should be married to a sailor, if she saw a sparrow, her future husband would be a simple peasant, and the goldfinch symbolized a rich spouse. In Wales, there was customary to give each other wooden spoons of different shapes on the day of all lovers. Because of this legend, St.
Valentine became known as the patron saint of love. The Saint Valentine prayer asks Saint Valentine to connect lovers together, so that two become one, and the couple remembers their devotion to God. While the Saint Valentine story set the groundwork for establishing the day as a holiday for romantic love, what truly solidified the connection between Saint Valentine and love was a poem by medieval author Geoffrey Chaucer in , which historians consider the origin of the "modern" celebration of Valentine's Day, where we celebrate our romantic partnership with one other person.
Chaucer lived in the Middle Ages, the era of courtly love, when broad, romantic statements of devotion—poems, songs, paintings—celebrated partnership. By the end of the 15th century, the word "valentine" was being used to describe a lover in poems and songs of the day, and in the 18th century, a book called The Young Man's Valentine Writer was published in England.
By the midth century, mass-produced paper Valentine's Cards were being created though Valentine card ideas are still worth trying , and Valentine's Day as we know it was born.
The truth about Valentine's Day history is that the romantic holiday isn't immune to trauma. In Prohibition Chicago in , seven men were killed by a gang organized by Al Capone on February The Valentine's Day Massacre became a flashpoint in Prohibition history, with police and lawmakers going after the gangs and mobs that had formed in cities to control then-illegal substances like alcohol.
Over the years and centuries , Valentine's Day has been a religious celebration, an ancient ritual day, and a commercial holiday. The tradition of giving our loved ones handwritten cards is alive and well today, centuries later. It is also customary for festivals and celebrations to be held throughout its many cities. Women pin the names of their crush or love interest on their shirt sleeves, which is an ancient Roman tradition known as Lupercalia.
In many cases, this is how men can discover who their secret admirers are. At the end of the day, each of these celebrations and traditions are about one thing: showing the people in your life how much you appreciate and love them. By Maddie Eden. These matches often ended in marriage.
It was not until much later, however, that the day became definitively associated with love. The English poet Geoffrey Chaucer was the first to record St. The oldest known valentine still in existence today was a poem written in by Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London following his capture at the Battle of Agincourt.
The greeting is now part of the manuscript collection of the British Library in London, England. Several years later, it is believed that King Henry V hired a writer named John Lydgate to compose a valentine note to Catherine of Valois. Accounts of his birth vary; some say he is the son of Nyx and Erebus; others, of Aphrodite and Ares; still others suggest he is the son of Iris and Zephyrus or even Aphrodite and Zeus who would have been both his father and grandfather.
According to the Greek Archaic poets, Eros was a handsome immortal played with the emotions of Gods and men, using golden arrows to incite love and leaden ones to sow aversion. By the middle of the 18th, it was common for friends and lovers of all social classes to exchange small tokens of affection or handwritten notes, and by printed cards began to replace written letters due to improvements in printing technology.
Americans probably began exchanging hand-made valentines in the early s. In the s, Esther A. Howland began selling the first mass-produced valentines in America. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. Hundreds of years of traditions and customs have made it into the holiday that we observe today.
0コメント