The Origins of Valentine’s Day:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From: http://www.history.com/topics/valentines-day

 

Every February 14, across the United States and in other places around the world, candy, flowers and gifts are exchanged between loved ones, all in the name of St. Valentine. But who is this mysterious saint, and where did these traditions come from? Find out about the history of this centuries-old holiday, from ancient Roman rituals to the customs of Victorian England.

 

The Legend of St. Valentine

 

The history of Valentine’s Day–and the story of its patron saint–is shrouded in mystery. We do know that February has long been celebrated as a month of romance, and that St. Valentine’s Day, as we know it today, contains vestiges of both Christian and ancient Roman tradition. But who was Saint Valentine, and how did he become associated with this ancient rite?

 

The Catholic Church recognizes at least three different saints named Valentine or Valentinus, all of whom were martyred. One legend contends that Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When Valentine’s actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death.

 

Other stories suggest that Valentine may have been killed for attempting to help Christians escape harsh Roman prisons, where they were often beaten and tortured. According to one legend, an imprisoned Valentine actually sent the first “valentine” greeting himself after he fell in love with a young girl–possibly his jailor’s daughter–who visited him during his confinement. Before his death, it is alleged that he wrote her a letter signed “From your Valentine,” an expression that is still in use today. Although the truth behind the Valentine legends is murky, the stories all emphasize his appeal as a sympathetic, heroic and–most importantly–romantic figure. By the Middle Ages, perhaps thanks to this reputation, Valentine would become one of the most popular saints in England and France.

 

Origins of Valentine’s Day: A Pagan Festival in February

 

While some believe that Valentine’s Day is celebrated in the middle of February to commemorate the anniversary of Valentine’s death or burial–which probably occurred around A.D. 270–others claim that the Christian church may have decided to place St. Valentine’s feast day in the middle of February in an effort to “Christianize” the pagan celebration of Lupercalia. Celebrated at the ides of February, or February 15, Lupercalia was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus.

 

To begin the festival, members of the Luperci, an order of Roman priests, would gather at a sacred cave where the infants Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were believed to have been cared for by a she-wolf or lupa. The priests would sacrifice a goat, for fertility, and a dog, for purification. They would then strip the goat’s hide into strips, dip them into the sacrificial blood and take to the streets, gently slapping both women and crop fields with the goat hide. Far from being fearful, Roman women welcomed the touch of the hides because it was believed to make them more fertile in the coming year. Later in the day, according to legend, all the young women in the city would place their names in a big urn. The city’s bachelors would each choose a name and become paired for the year with his chosen woman. These matches often ended in marriage.

 

Valentine’s Day: A Day of Romance

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lupercalia survived the initial rise of Christianity and but was outlawed—as it was deemed “un-Christian”–at the end of the 5th century, when Pope Gelasius declared February 14 St. Valentine’s Day. It was not until much later, however, that the day became definitively associated with love. During the Middle Ages, it was commonly believed in France and England that February 14 was the beginning of birds’ mating season, which added to the idea that the middle of Valentine’s Day should be a day for romance.

 

Valentine greetings were popular as far back as the Middle Ages, though written Valentine’s didn’t begin to appear until after 1400. The oldest known valentine still in existence today was a poem written in 1415 by Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London following his capture at the Battle of Agincourt. (The greeting is now part of the manuscript collection of the British Library in London, England.) Several years later, it is believed that King Henry V hired a writer named John Lydgate to compose a valentine note to Catherine of Valois.

 

Typical Valentine’s

Day Greetings

 

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“Our Love Affair is a Wondrous Thing”:

 

Our love affair is a wondrous thing

that we’ll rejoice in remembering
Our love was born with our first embrace
And a page was torn out of time and space

 

Our love affair, may it always be
a flame to burn through eternity
So take my hand with a fervent prayer
that we may live and we may share
A love affair to remember

 

Our love affair is a wondrous thing

 

that we’ll rejoice in remembering
Our love was born with our first embrace
And a page was torn out of time and space

 

Our love affair, may it always be
a flame to burn through eternity
So take my hand with a fervent prayer
that we may live and we may share
A love affair to remember.

 

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An Affair to Remember

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

 

An Affair to Remember is a 1957 film starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, and directed by Leo McCarey. It was distributed by 20th Century Fox.

 

The film is considered one of the most romantic of all time, according to the American Film Institute. The film was a remake of McCarey’s 1939 film Love Affair, starring Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer. An Affair to Remember was almost identical to Love Affair on a scene-to-scene basis. McCarey used the same screenplay as the original film, which was penned by Delmer Daves and Donald Ogden Stewart.

 

Contributing to the success of the 1957 film is its theme song, “An Affair to Remember (Our Love Affair)”, composed by Harry Warren and with lyrics by Leo McCarey and Harold Adamson. The song is sung by Vic Damone during the film’s opening credits and then sung later by Deborah Kerr‘s character, Terry McKay, a nightclub singer-turned-music teacher. Kerr’s singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon, who also dubbed for Kerr in the film The King and I.

 

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Plot of the film (as penned by this author):

 

One of the principal characters of the film, Nickie Ferrante (Cary Grant) is a well-known playboy; flamboyant philanderer and dilettante in the arts. He is suave, talented, charismatic and handsome and hence, he often manages to catch the public eye. He admits not having worked a single day of his life. Charming and

 

amiable, he is often seen as being whimsical, temperamental, rude and obstinate. He happens to meet Terry McKay (Deborah Kerr) aboard the transatlantic ocean liner SS Constitution en route from Europe to New York. Terry is a slim and beautiful woman and is immediately likeable for her attractive personality and charming ways. While it is true that both Nickie and Terry are unmarried, they are both in a relationship with someone else. After a series of chance meetings aboard the ship, they establish a friendship.

 

It so happens that the ocean liner docks at Villefranche-sur-Mer, on the Mediterranean coast & Nickie uses this opportunity to take Terry – his new-found friend – to meet his old grandmother who lives in a quaint and pretty house, with a magnificent view of the busy Mediterranean coastline. Nickie’s grandmother is eighty-two years old & she takes an instant liking to Terry; she even remarks to Nickie that she is very unlike all the other women that he has had in his life. By this statement, Nickie’s grandmother implies that Terry would be a very suitable life-partner to him. During the visit, it is revealed that Nikki is a gifted person in many avenues of life and is a talented painter. Nikki has given up his painting due to being very critical towards his own art. It is during this visit that Terry begins to see Nikki in a new light and they both feel themselves falling in love with each other. As the ship returns to New York City, they agree to reunite at the top of the Empire State Building in six months’ time, to see if they have succeeded in ending their relationships and starting new careers for themselves.

 

On the day of the rendezvous at the Empire State Building, Terry has an accident while crossing the road. She had looked upwards at the towering building because “it was the nearest thing to heaven” and she was knocked down by a speeding vehicle. Gravely injured, she is rushed to the hospital where she remains delirious and in much pain. Her former boyfriend, who had met her just before the accident, looks after her as devotedly as a husband would, even though he already knows by now that Terry has fallen in love with Nickie Ferrante, the notorious playboy.

 

Meanwhile, Nickie continues to wait for Terry at the observation deck of the EmpireStateBuilding – he is unaware of the terrible accident and, after many hours, finally concedes that she will not arrive. He leaves the building, at midnight, feeling very dejected & believes that Terry has rejected him.

 

After the accident, Terry, who is now unable to walk, refuses to contact Nickie, wanting to hide her disability from him. Instead, she finds herself a fulfilling job as a music teacher. Nickie too, has taken up painting in earnest and has worked very hard in the last six months to earn his living honestly – thus making himself feel that he could be a worthy spouse of Terry. Nickie’s old friend, the proprietor of an art shop, helps in showcasing Nickie’s artwork in his art gallery. Nickie refuses to sign his art-works as “Nickie Ferrante” –he uses a pseudonym instead because he does not want his paintings to sell due to ‘the Ferrante brand-name.’ Nickie shows himself, by now, as being a decent, honest, sincere and self-respecting man.

 

Six months after the accident, Terry happens to see Nickie with his former fiancée at the ballet, which she herself is attending with her former boyfriend. Nickie does not notice her condition because she is seated and she only manages, with difficulty, to say “hello” as he passes her. Terry’s former boyfriend begs Terry that she allow him to tell Nickie about the accident and how she is now forced to use a wheelchair for moving from place to place. Terry steadfastly refuses – she does not want to become a nuisance to Nickie, with his ‘happy-go-lucky’ carefree lifestyle. By doing so, she amply proves that she loves him with all her heart and loves him enough to “let him go” – she knows that knowledge of her disability will tie him down endlessly. Nickie has led a life “as free as a bird”- Terry felt that he might begin to resent being tied down by the fact that she was now bed-ridden.

 

Nickie finally finds out where Terry lives and on Christmas Eve pays a surprise visit to her. Although he steers the conversation in such a way as to make her explain her actions, Terry merely dodges the subject every single time, never leaving the couch on which she sits.

 

As he is leaving, Nickie mentions a painting that he had been working on when they originally met – it was a beautiful, heart-felt painting of Terry herself and he had painted it from memory. Nickie tells Terry how this painting was given away at the art shop to a woman who liked it immensely but she had had no money to pay for it. He is about to say that the woman was in a wheelchair when he pauses, suddenly suspecting why Terry has been sitting, unmoving, on the couch. He was about to leave when this reality forces him to walk hurriedly into her bedroom where he sees his painting hanging on the wall – a wheelchair concealed there too. He now knows why Terry could not keep their appointment and her part of the promise. The film ends with the two in a tight embrace, each realizing that the other’s love endures despite many difficulties. At the end of the film, Terry says, “If you can paint, I can walk; anything can happen, don’t you think?”

 

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Contrary to popular belief, Valentine’s Day is not restricted to the love shared by lovers alone; the concept of Love is a wondrous thing and it covers a large number of people and interpersonal relationships – it covers the love between lovers, husband and wife; father and mother; between siblings and between friends who are either married or unmarried.

 

It is a matter of immediate consideration that even though Valentine’s Day is celebrated worldwide on 14th February; it actually ought to embody the spirit of love, kindness, caring, sharing, consideration, mutual respect and compassion through every single day of any given year. It ought to be a love that endures despite many obstacles.

 

Let us all try to live up to the ideals of Love, not only on Valentine’s Day but through each and every single day of our lives – all for the sake of Love – a wondrous and many-splendored thing. This story is a true lesson in selflessness and unconditional love. In that sense, most people will agree with me that it is indeed “an affair to remember” – for now and forever!