By now, you are no doubt up to your armpits with red hearts and cards and heart shaped boxes of candy, giving or getting. You may even have been toying with the notion of sending a "Pajama-gram" which is the newest wrinkle in gift-giving for the holiday,which touts a choice of pajama's, in a gift bag, which includes a lavender sachet,candy or flowers or such,and a do-not-disturb sign for the door!And in the ad, they say, she won't be able to get her clothes off fast enough to try on these beautiful creations! Well. Your eyeballs have clouded over with the jewelry and lingerie ads on television and in the newspaper, and the prices of roses have you hyperventilating! I can certainly understand why anyone would be torn as to what to get their sweetheart, if in the position to get anything at all, and so this rumor that is spread by some cynics about all gift and card giving holidays has cropped up once again. You know the one I mean. That it is just another made up holiday, fabricated by the card producers and the candy makers, and the flower industry to make more money.
Well, I am here to tell you that nothing could be further from the truth. The day is named after an actual man, Saint Valentine,a Roman priest and martyr, a patron saint of lovers, whose loving spirit and kindness to all living things earned him a name honored throughout the ancient world,(c 269) and when he died, everyone who knew him grieved,and the stories told about him, finally inspired this day to commemorate his loving nature.However, the customs practiced on his feast day(Feb. 14) have nothing to do with his life. It seems that in ancient Rome, boys drew girls names from a love urn on February 15th, and the early Christian church transferred this popular pagan custom to St.Valentine's feast day, rather than abolish it. Paper Valentines, the ritual of sending cards to declare one's love, did not come along until the 16 th century.
Somehow, it seems fitting that this day of sweet displays of affection should be inspired, at least in part by a man whose life was dedicated to purity and innocent behavior, thereby keeping some of the charm of actual courting alive in an age when so little remains of the practice of wooing the one you love.
OUI?
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