The magazine for all things Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo
Serving the Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo community since 1999
Available at select spots all across Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo
The magazine for all things Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo
Serving the Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo community since 1999
Available at select spots all across Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo
Saints, martyrs and little candy hearts
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Contrary to popular belief Valentine’s Day was not created by the greeting card industry but has in fact been celebrated since the 14th or 15th centuries, and really has nothing to do with St. Valentine.
There were three saints, Christian martyrs of ancient Rome, called Valentine or Valentinus: a priest, a bishop and one whom all is known is he went to Africa. February 14 was their feast day.
It is often suggested that the Roman Catholic Church created it to super-cede the pagan fertility festival of Lupercalia, of February 15, as co-opting pagan holidays, ruins, ideas has long been practiced as effective ways to replace religions. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the feast of St. Valentine was first decreed in 496AD by Pope Gelasius I, and that the three Valentines were lumped in to be honored that day with a few other random saints, “...whose names are justly reverenced among men, but whose acts are known only to God,”-(PG1), i.e. no one could remember what they were sainted for, but they needed a feast day. Pagan festival killing and saint clearing house all in one. There are popular legends that state some connection between the three Valentines and love exist, letters signed “from your valentine,” etc, but they are very likely untrue as the martyrs were all born and died before there was really much of a concept of romantic love.
Did you know that, that human beings created romance in the middle ages? Well, perhaps it existed in some form before then, but it was not celebrated. Marriages, when they existed, were usually business transactions having to do with royalty and land rights and young men and women were often contracted for marriage from birth, not much romance there. But then, lucky for us, came the knights and the poets of the middle ages, who felt love and devotion a fitting past time. Reams and reams of literature exist from that time period, all about the joys and sorrows of love.
In the middle ages it was believed that mid-February marked the beginning of bird mating season when birds would choose their mates, so February 14 seemed a fitting day to exchange love letters and love tokens, poems and locks of hair, and later came chocolate and diamonds, and roses and greeting cards.
Originally a French and English concept, celebrating Valentine’s Day has spread world-wide, usually with each country having its own local twist and many having other love related holidays as well. Here in Mexico it is El Día de San Valentín, El Día del Amor y la Amistad, (St. Valentine’s Day, the day of love and friendship), and is celebrated much like everywhere else with the giving of gifts and declarations of friendship and love. It is also a night very full of restaurant reservations, so remember to book early.
According to the Greeting Card Association, approximately one billion valentine cards are sent each year world-wide, making Valentine’s Day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year behind Christmas, and that it is women who purchase up to 85 percent of all valentines.
So whether you want to sacrifice a goat to the fertility god Lupercus or just impress your mate, February 14th has been the day to do it, for centuries.Love quotes to spice up your love letters “You are my heart, my life, my one and only thought.” -Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The White Company “Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, Too rude, too boist’rous; and it pricks like thorn.” “I never had one hour’s happiness in her society, and yet my mind all round the four-and-twenty hours was harping on the happiness of having her with me unto death.” -Charles Dickens, Great Expectations “. . . love is a great beautifier.” -Louisa May Alcott, Little Women “. . . Love is no hot-house flower, but a wild plant...when it blooms by chance within the hedge of our gardens, we call a flower; and when it blooms outside we call a weed; but, flower or weed, whose scent and colour are always, wild!” -John Galsworthy, The Forsyte Saga “That quiet mutual gaze of a trusting husband and wife is like the first moment of rest or refuge from a great weariness or a great danger.” -George Eliot, Silas Marner “Her love was entire as a child’s, and though warm as summer it was fresh as spring.” -Thomas Hardy, Far From The Madding Crowd “Life isn’t long enough for love and art.” -W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence “If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.” -Jane Austen, Emma “So we stood hand in hand, like two children, and there was peace in our hearts for all the dark things that surrounded us.” -Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of The Four “But the disparaging of those we love always alienates us from them to some extent. We must not touch our idols; the gilt comes off in our hands.” -Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary “There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel.” -Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers “Love, however, is very materially assisted by a warm and active imagination: which has a long memory, and will thrive, for a considerable time, on very slight and sparing food.” -Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby “The love that is never to be realized will often remain a man’s guiding ideal.” -Rafael Sabatini, Captain Blood “. . . imagination is at the root of much that passes for love.” -Gilbert Parker, The Trespasser “. . . the task of reclaiming a bad man is extremely seductive to good women.” -George Meredith, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel “These violent delights have violent ends . . .” -William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet “What is love but a disease?” -Andrew Lang, The Disentanglers “Love comforteth like sunshine after rain.” -William Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis “Those who are faithful know only the pleasures of love: it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies. Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot . . . “ -Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray “Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.” -George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss “She wished to give him nothing, but that he should give her all. It is a bargain not infrequently levied in love.” -William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair “The winds were warm about us, the whole earth seemed the wealthier for our love.” -Harriet Prescott Spofford, The Amber Gods “Love of man for woman--love of woman for man. That’s the nature, the meaning, the best of life itself.” -Zane Grey, Riders of the Purple Sage “Love knows not distance; it hath no continent; its eyes are for the stars . . .” -Gilbert Parker, Parables Of A Province “In her first passion woman loves her lover, In all the others, all she loves is love.” -Lord Byron, Don Juan |
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