By: Pramod Kandanarachchi
Many lovers would take advantage of February fourteenth – Valentines Day – to express their adoration to their sweethearts in the form of greeting cards and chocolates (perhaps few smooches tooJ). It was a celebration of more than one Christian Saints since about 200AD that may not had much to do with love. Most notable Christian martyrs named Valentine who were honored on this day were Valentine of Rome and valentine of Terni.
If you are eager to make use of this February fourteenth to make a move on your sweetheart and hopefully get reciprocated (get lucky…) maybe you should thank Geoffrey Chaucer (in addition to Saint Valentine of course) who had made the first documented association between the Saint Valentine’s day and romantic love.
It was the year 1382. King Richard II of England was about to rejoice his matrimony to Ann of Bohemia held in Westminster Abbey. It wasn’t a popular merger for his subjects since it brought little financial benefits to England (no dowry?). The rumor was that he paid a big sum to her brother get their consent. The journalists (and paparazzi too) of the late middle ages were also not very sympathetic to his bride Ann. However the King apparently had a very romantic heart (well… he and his newlywed were just fifteen years old so there is no brainer there). The King hired Chaucer to write a poem in honor of their union.
Chaucer wrote his ‘Parliament of Fowls’ that drew parallels between human courting and the mating of birds. One of Chaucer’s stanzas decodes to modern English as: this Valentine’s Day every bird comes here to choose his mate.
So the modern Valentine’s Day was born….
The love birds all over the globe please come and greet fourteenth of February with flowers, sweets and of course a few poems.
Then there is this war on Saint Valentine’s Day coming from the East: The arguments against celebrating this day have origins in both religious and political perspectives.
The religious censures arising from more traditional sages stem from the belief that the amatory display of affection is somehow a sin. This kind of thinking is not limited to Eastern religions such as Hinduism or Buddhism but also to almost all other mainstream religions including Christianity. In fact most of the present day values on the subject of etiquette in physical affection claimed by most easterners as their own were introduced to them by western missionaries when they were aggressively converting the natives to Christianity.
Interestingly, there was a rich custom of celebrating erotic love in ancient India personified by Kamadeva. Unfortunately this tradition was lost by the Middle Ages.
More political types with nationalistic predilections from the East consider this as another instance of an adulteration of traditional Asian cultures by western influence. Their censures have an economic component stemming from the belief that one of the ways how neocolonialism exploits countries like Sri Lanka is by commercialization of all aspects of their life including love. They see the greeting cards, gifts, flowers, etc. are nothing but empty gestures performed by youth because they were brainwashed by exploitative market-based economic campaigns.
It is difficult (and useless too) to make a case for or against putting aside a day to celebrate love. Maybe we should end this article with the fable of Saint Valentine of Rome that would hopefully be some food for thought….
It was about the year 270 A.D. when the Roman Emperor Claudius II assumed that falling in love and getting married (and subsequently making babies) is not good for his soldiers. Obviously he did not want to make his army mellow by allowing them to become husbands or fathers. Of course that was not very nice of the Emperor to take away the ultimate happiness from the very people who would get maimed or killed by fighting on his behest. This also reminds us of one such mean-spirited person from Sri Lanka who instituted similar edict in early 1980s on his young boy and girl combatants but could not follow the decree for himself. Anyway, those Roman soldiers had a liberator in the name of Saint Valentine. He secretly performed Christian weddings for soldiers and one of the nice gestures he did was cutting out hearts from parchment and giving them to soldiers and persecuted Christians.
Saint Valentine was imprisoned for this treasonous act. It is said that the Emperor himself visited Saint Valentine in prison and attempted to convert him to Roman Paganism (talk about unethical conversions…). Well… the word is that Saint Valentine refused and in fact tried to convert the Emperor to Christianity but evidently failed.
So, he was executed.
But not before he performed a miracle and gave eyesight to the daughter of his jailer (perhaps his tormentor if we go by the present day standards of the penitentiaries – think about the compassion extended not only to his followers but also to his enemies too).
He also wrote the first ever Valentine’s card to her signing as “from your Valentine”.
I think that is one nice person worth remembering whether you get lucky or not on this fourteenth day of February.
