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How the phrase ‘From Your Valentine’ was coined
As businesses capitalise on the occasion of Saint Valentine’s Day which is highly anticipated by many and set to be observed the world over today (February 14), there is a small corner of the world where the true meaning of the day is expressed in actual words.
While it is common knowledge that the day is intended to express love in various ways mainly through the exchange of gifts, the National Library has for years been seeking to highlight the importance of the day in a very amorous way – in fact, in sheer words sprinkled with a touch of expressive ideas.
Mounted on the lower flat of the library is a display which showcases touching poems and messages which accentuate the importance of the occasion. In an attempt to give an answer to the question “What is Valentine’s Day?” National Library staffers were able to enlighten the reading public that Valentine’s Day is the traditional day on which lovers in certain cultures let each other know about their love commonly by sending cards, candy and flowers.
The history of the day can be traced back to an obscure Catholic Church feast day said to be in honour of Saint Valentine. The day’s association with romantic love arrived after the high middle ages during which the concept of romantic love was formulated.
According to Chief Librarian, Gillian Thompson, although this year’s exhibit was downplayed compared to previous years, the undertaking has been an annual feature created by the library’s staffers.
The celebration of Valentine’s Day is premised on an age-old story which suggests that long ago, as early as the 4th century B.C., the Romans engaged in a pagan annual young man’s rite of passage to the god, Lupercus.
Willing, young and single women would put their names in a big bowl. Bachelors would eagerly draw a name out of the bowl and be matched with the woman picked.
They would stay a couple for the year for mutual fun, enjoyment and entertainment, including sex. That ritual was repeated the next year.
The church leaders were determined to put an end to that pagan, ‘un-Christian’ practice and sought a ‘lover’ saint to replace the god Lupercus. In their mind, a bishop by the name of Valentine, who had been martyred some 200 years before, became the most likely candidate.
That most likely candidate, Bishop Valentine had enraged Emperor Claudius II aka the Mad Emperor. Claudius needed good soldiers and felt that married men made poor soldiers as they regularly placed their priority on their families and were unwilling to leave their families for battle. Claudius abolished marriage consequently.
Bishop Valentine secretly invited the lovers to his place and married them. When Claudius learned about that, he was furious and had him arrested.
Initially, Claudius tried to convert Valentine to the Roman gods as he was impressed with Valentine’s conviction. True to his conviction, Valentine stubbornly refused and was executed unceremoniously.
According to the legend, Valentine fell in love with the blind daughter of the jailer while awaiting execution. Valentine signed a message to her “From Your Valentine” before his death.
Till this day, that phrase has become so popular around the world. It is still currently used worldwide around Valentine’s Day.
The church leaders felt that Valentine would be the most ideal candidate to replace the god, Lupercus. Pope Gelasius outlawed the pagan annual young man’s rite which was held in the middle of February. To mitigate the impact of that new law and to satisfy the Romans’ love for lottery games, he replaced that with a new lottery game.
Instead of putting the names of willing single women into the bowl, names of saints were put in. Both men and women would draw out the names of the saints. They were then expected to emulate the life of the saint whose name they had drawn.
The spiritual overseer of the new rite was its patron saint, Valentine. Initially, most Roman males were obviously disappointed with the new lottery but with the passage of time, the pagan festival was forgotten and in its place was the now highly popular Saint Valentine’s Day.
The phrase coined by St Valentine, “From Your Valentine” remains highly popularly and is regularly used today.
(Source: Panati’s Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things, Charles Panati, 1st Edition, 1987, Harper & Row, New York)
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