Happy Valentine's Day

Valentine's day.  The options are few...love it, hate it, or maintain ambivalence.  I am sure blogs across the globe are lighting up with witty, moving, or hilariously sarcastic posts filled with pro or anti Valentine's day propaganda.  Suddenly, I feel a lot of pressure!

Hallmark has definitely scored a victory, but they cannot be credited or blamed all on their own.  There are the calendar makers, and schoolteachers who made you make little boxes for others to deposit their Valentine's into. The emotions surrounding Valentine's Day start in grade school, or even Kindergarten.  Did I get a Valentine from the cute boy?  Wait, which one is he?  We are all like 3 feet tall with little round faces, it's kind of hard to tell.  All of the adult angst trickles down into our world...will Snoopy do the happy dance and hug the Valentine to his heart if he gets one from the little Red Haired Girl?  What about Linus and Lucy?  Even Garfield wasn't above Valentine's Day...and he only liked Pooky, lasagna, and coffee...and maybe Odie a little bit.  Remember when everybody in Bambi gets twitterpated?

But long long before those days, Valentine's meant other things.  The first origins are traced back to roman pagan times, when the ides of February (the 15th) were celebrated with a fertility ritual involving a poor sacrificed goat and it's fresh hide being used to whack both women and the earth to grant them fertility.  Does anyone ever notice that it's the men involved in all these bizarre tales, yet always the women later blamed as witches, sorceresses, or just hags?  Just saying.  It's a good thing I was born in this time...if someone EVER hit me with a freshly killed goat bit, hags and witchery would be the least of their worries.  Anyway, this "celebration" of Faunas (roman god of agriculture), Romulus and Remus (founders of all that is Roman) was called Lupercalia (oh yeah, they sacrificed a dog as well as the name suggests), and somehow managed to survive up until about 500 AD.  They had figured out to make metal horseshoes, but couldn't yet correlate that smacking women with goat hides would not increase birthrates...I rather suspect they actually went down at this time.  Anyway, when Christianity began to be adopted, and saints began to be martyred, another legend of Valentine's takes place.  An Emperor in need of a bigger army outlawed marriage in the 3rd century (Claudius II for you history buffs).  Valentine disagreed and continued to perform marriages, and was eventually arrested and executed.  Legend has it that he fell in love with his jailer's daughter, and signed love notes to her, "your Valentine."  Until his death of course, which made the story more memorable.

When paganism began to be squashed, St. Valentine's Day was offered to the masses in lieu of the festival of Lupercalia...as religion often did when transitioning people from pagan holidays to Christian holidays.  The party stays about the same time, the practice and ideas change slightly at first, until the old ways are forgotten.  About a thousand years later, the English and the French were really into their bird watching, and botany amongst other things, and they declared February the 14th the beginning of bird mating season.  And so the association of romance and Valentine's Day was further solidified by the gentry of the time.

For those of you planning on a day of romance, there is your excuse.  Nature commands you to feel twitterpated, like Bambi and the birds.  You should embrace it and do something special for your loved one.  If you are really smooth you will do yoga with your girlfriend (true story).  Let there be flowers and chocolates and sweet words on glittering cards.  This is your day to let your little marshmallow heart shine.

Then of course there are the singles.  There are the ambivalent singles...and then there are the angry singles. Let them rant.  If you thought it was bad not having a full Valentine's box on your desk in grade school, imagine being the girl in the office who the flower delivery guy doesn't come for...the one he keeps avoiding eye contact with as the room fills up with perky floral arrangements, giant teddy bears, and bright balloons.  If you are one of the people who feels a little blue about being alone on a day when togetherness literally is front page news, and that prompts you to denounce the holiday, well there is a little history you can add to your arsenal as well.  Valentine's Day is also historically known for a number of violent murders.  There was of course the St. Valentine's Day massacre of 1929 when Al Capone's gang executed 7 of Bugs Moran's gang.  A much bigger historical tragedy took place in Strasbourg in 1349.  On February 14 of that year, 900 Jewish people were burned alive in the city as a preventative measure as Europe succumbed to terror and finger pointing while the plague gripped the continent.  The masses blamed a minority with false accusations of poisoning wells and causing the plague.  With this in mind, you should take a moment to hug a nearby microbiologist (me), because if anyone comes up with a dumb idea like this again we can slap them and set the record straight.

Through the course of writing this blog, I have decided that I am quasi-ambivalent to Valentine's Day.  I did not make a Valentine's box, and I will probably consciously avoid the reception area and that awkward moment where the flower delivery guy shows up with not enough flowers for everybody.  Facebook is filled with cartoons and pictures, but the one that I loved most was by Grumpy Cat.

Good point!

It made me laugh and remember that it is all about perspective.  It is just another day.  You can love it, you can hate it, it is all in the way that you look at it.  For me, there may not be a tale of romance to type out in honor of the day.  But there is a little Snoopy bag waiting to be opened that my friend Siobhan packaged up weeks ago before her holiday with instructions that it was not to be opened until Valentine's Day.  I got sent imaginary bubble hearts and flowers by a friend via email to distribute among the Bermuda crew, although I was told I could make my imaginary flower bouquet the biggest one.  I am also reminded of a little red stuffed penguin named Hope from a friend one year, as well as the years where I met up with one of the girls or a few for lunches...and of course, the year I received flowers and chocolates from Tonya's husband at work -- she did get the bigger set, but he made sure her work buddy didn't get forgotten on Valentine's Day either.  Yup, he's a good one (he even knows how to shop in her sizes), so for Mark and all the other sweet guys out there that are spoiling their wives and girlfriends rotten, I think I can become  pro-Valentine's Day as a show of support.

Perspective was the theme that kept running through my head all week, especially while taking photos.  Too often we are guilty of not being in the moment, of looking but not seeing.  I had several opportunities this week to go slower, to look closer at some things, both the physical and the metaphorical.  I enjoyed the view.  So, Grumpy cat is right.  No one loves you any more because it's Valentine's...nor are you loved any less than usual.  So celebrate, be ambivalent, but please don't be angry or hit anyone with a goat.  Here are some flowers in case you need them.  Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Life, like photography,is all about perception....

...and much better up close and personal