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Community Corner

Of Hearts and History

A look at the origins and meaning of Valentine's Day.

Last weekend, I spent the afternoon helping Libby through that familiar February writing exercise: signing and addressing Valentines.

She had chosen a special treat for her classmates at Red Bank. “I don’t want just cards this year,” she explained earlier that week, as we shopped the displays at the CVS. She turned down suggestions of cards featuring Hello Kitty or Scooby-Doo, emblazoned with slogans like, “Get A Clue! I Like You!”

Finally, she found the perfect selection. “Ooh, I want this one!” she said, holding out a box of Fun Dips. Yeah, because nothing says “love” like a pouch of flavored sugar and a Sweet-Tart dipping stick.

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As I watched her address the candies, one for each of her 22 classmates, I remembered going through the same routine many many years before. Before I was in kindergarten, our Valentine’s Day were personal, family affairs. My dad would design a scavenger hunt, one that would lead us bounding through our house from parlor to kitchen to laundry room, where we’d find our treasure–chocolate hearts, a little one for each of us and a large one adorned with a rose for our mom.

But once I was school-aged, Valentine’s Day became a mass production deal. In my kindergarten class at Oakview, each of the students in Mrs. Joiner’s classroom designed their own “mailbox”–a shoebox suitably decorated with cupids and flowers, with a slot cut in the top where our classmates could slip their cards. Being an artsy kind of kid, I was more about the box than the cards I anticipated. I carefully covered the shoebox with aluminum foil, then pasted red construction paper hearts to the lid near the slot. On Valentine’s Day, my box came home filled with cartoon Valentines.

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Back then, the “romance” wasn’t very exclusive. After all, our Valentines were of the “equal opportunity” variety. “If you’re giving out Valentines, you have to include everyone,” Mrs. Joiner told us. Not a bad rule, especially for a group of kids who cared more about the chocolate than the sentiment.

Actually, the first Valentines weren’t invitations to romance and happily ever afters, either. They were actually notes of longing, of goodbye. You see, the tradition started way back in the ancient days of Rome, when Emperor Claudius the Second was in power. Claudius was a vicious warrior, and he was insane, which is not a good combination in a world leader. (Something we may want to keep in mind come Election Day….but I digress.)

Anyway, Claudius determined that his armies were falling in numbers because too many men were reluctant to leave their wives, fiancées and girlfriends to go into battle. Instead of taking the modern-day approach of a mandatory draft, Claudius issued a law cancelling all the marriages and engagements in Rome. This wouldn’t bode well for the future of the empire, of course, but Claudius was a “Band-Aid solution” type of guy.

Despite the law, Romans continued to fall in love. And one brave priest continued to marry the lovers in secret. His name was Valentine. (I bet you guessed that part.)

The thing about secret love, though, is it never stays secret for long. So Valentine was caught, brought before the loveless Claudius and condemned to death. A bit harsh, of course, but these Roman emperors were into grand gestures.

Valentine was imprisoned to wait his scheduled execution. But the couples he helped to marry and others who admired his stand didn’t forget the priest. They threw flowers, notes and other small gifts into the window of the cell, thanking Valentine.

A daughter of a prison guard befriended the priest during his incarceration, visiting him regularly to talk, to share thoughts, even to laugh. When the execution date arrived–Feb. 14, 270–Valentine scribbled his goodbye note to the girl while waiting for the soldiers to take him away. He spoke of his love for her, and his appreciation for the time they shared. He signed the note, “Your Valentine.”

That kind of love is sometimes lost in the shoeboxes of folded cards and bubblegum sentiments. Sometimes it’s even lost when we’re grown up, exchanging Hallmark sentiments and dining together while the candles are shining and the music plays soft and slow.

Love, after all, is hard work and commitment, the laughter and the tears and the forward and backwards steps that make up a life. Like the ads say, we celebrate “us” on Valentine’s Day, but there’s something romantic and something real about waking up with your Valentine on Feb. 15 and every day after.

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