Happy Valentine's Day

Valentines Day or St. Valentines Day arose from ancient Christian traditions commemorating a saint. But the original meaning of the feast was to commemorate the saint's martyred death. Today's holiday is much different, being about love and relationships. Our holiday is partly filtered through late medieval writing from several authors, even Geoffrey Chaucer, surprisingly, who spoke of love birds on St. Valentyn's Day choosing their mates. It's intriguing to speculate that these writers were describing long-held folk traditions that had developed during the medieval centuries. Nonetheless, in our time we celebrate Valentine's Day as a romantic tradition in many countries, not a religious one.

So Valentine's Day is a celebration of love, fun, joy, and intense relationships. It's a day when someone asks another to "be my valentine" and declares his or her own feelings. It's the single most busy day for florists in this country, flowers being one of the traditional gifts and until the advent of email it was one of the busiest times for mail. This particular day is celebrated in various ways around the world. Here in the United States it's become very commercial, but a century ago the observances were sweeter and more personal. A boy would bring a girl a small bouquet, perhaps, if he was really flamboyant. Or a girl might secretly leave a valentine in a boy's mailbox. The idea of big boxes of chocolates or long-stemmed roses, or jewelry was mostly alien and unconsidered.

As you'd expect, the golden age illustrators had quite a lot to say about the holiday.

J.C. Leyendecker, 1924

J.C. Leyendecker remains one of the icons of the golden age. His image of Cupid on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post in 1924 remains a defining one for Valentine's Day. Cupid has already launched his joyful arrow and awaits the result. Leyendecker had the capacity to give us freshness and youth with beautiful skin tones that show clearly in the Cupid's glow. It's easy to see why his work was in high demand during the early 20th century. This particular painting was on the February 14 issue of the Saturday Evening Post.

Norman Rockwell, "Gazing at the Moon (Puppy Love)" 1926

From around the same time as Leyendecker's Cupid is a sweet Valentine's Day picture, by Norman Rockwell. This painting of a boy and girl looking at the moon has all of the touches you might expect from Rockwell, complete with a couple of plucked daisies, a fishing pole, and a dog (the artist was quoted as saying when a picture didn't go well, put in a puppy). Despite being almost too-sentimental and commercial, the image tells us the truth of Rockwell's time, in a way--people were more sentimental and less callous; children had innocent bouts of puppy love. A handful of daisies was more touching than anything. The times themselves were relatively innocent and our ancestors were sweeter, more polite, and more private. That's how I want it to have been, anyway.

It's too bad that the old, sentimental holiday has become so glossy.