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Valentine’s Special (Holiday Series #3)
Claire and Tim discuss Valentine’s Day and how it came to be and how it is across the world. Discussions of practices worldwide and how love is expressed in varying ways.
Sources:
- https://www.britannica.com/topic/Valentines-Day
- https://blog.rosettastone.com/valentines-day-traditions-around-the-world/
- https://www.npr.org/2011/02/14/133693152/the-dark-origins-of-valentines-day
- https://paganpages.org/emagazine/2024/02/14/lupercalia-the-ancient-pagan-roots-of-valentines-day/
- https://nrf.com/research-insights/holiday-data-and-trends/valentines-day
- https://daily.jstor.org/the-origins-of-st-valentines-day/https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Valentine
- https://librarynews.blog.fordham.edu/2023/02/15/whats-love-got-to-do-with-it-2/#:~:text=Another%20common%20legend%20states%20that,day%20is%20associated%20with%20love.
- https://www.theknot.com/content/indian-wedding-traditions
- https://www.theknot.com/content/favorite-wedding-traditions-from-around-the-world
- image: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fkids.nationalgeographic.com%2Fcelebrations%2Farticle%2Fvalentines-day&psig=AOvVaw2vp6AG3I_WMCf8gAdIZp2G&ust=1739655739062000&source=images&cd=vfe&opi=89978449&ved=0CBQQjRxqFwoTCLDpjOaQxIsDFQAAAAAdAAAAABAE
Transcript:
Claire:
Hi everyone. It’s Claire. Welcome back to anthrop.mp3. Before we get this episode started, I just wanted to let you all know that while a lot of our old team members are still here, we’re also welcoming in some new team members who wanted to quickly introduce themselves to y’all so let’s get right into that before the episode.
Tim:
Hi, my name is Tim. I’m an anthropology major. My favorite subfield of anthropology is probably Linguistic Anthropology.
Emily:
Hi, my name is Emily, and I’m a BDIC student studying media and technology cultures, and my favorite subfield is cultural anthropology.
Sophia:
Hi, my name is Sophia Hill. I am a cultural anthropology student, and I am a huge fan of collaborative ethnography.
Leah:
Hi, guys. My name is Leah. I’m an evolutionary anthropology student, and my favorite subfield is probably primatology.
MUSIC
Claire:
Hello friends, and welcome back to anthro.mp3. We’re students from UMass who love anthropology. AnthroHub is a website we help run that’s full of all things Anthro. Make sure to check it out to look at some incredible blog posts and creative works made by students from our school and others. My name is Claire, and I’ll be one of your hosts for today’s episode.
Tim:
My name is Tim. I’ll be your other host for today. So Claire, maybe we should get into the history a little bit before we talk about Valentine’s Day as we know it today. How did we get here?
Claire:
Well, the name of the holiday is a tribute to St Valentine, who’s a composite Catholic martyr. I’m using the word composite here because research actually shows at least two Valentines who were martyred in the Roman Empire era. They both died on the same day as well. No surprise, it was february 14, and if you’ve ever wondered about the terminology of the holiday as well, there’s actually a particular explanation for that that’s linked to St Valentine. So when you ask someone to quote be your Valentine, it references a letter that St Valentine supposedly wrote to the daughter of his jailer, which he signed as your Valentine.
Tim:
That’s pretty cute. So, okay, so wait, why was Valentine so close to the jailer’s daughter anyway, in the first place?
Claire:
Well, Valentine isn’t actually just the patron saint of lovers. We’ll talk more about that patronage later. He actually cured the daughter of blindness, supposedly, and he’s also known for being a patron saint of those with epilepsy as well as beekeepers.
Tim:
(The) guy was really talented.. He could do it all.
Claire:
Right? *haha*
So true. That said, we have been focusing a lot on this holiday’s namesake, and I’m sure there’s more to the story, if you want to talk a bit about that?
Tim:
Yeah – So interestingly enough, Valentine’s Day actually has some pre Christianity roots too. There’s a pagan holiday called Lupercalia that was celebrated in the Roman Empire and all of its territories too. Lubricality was usually celebrated between February 13-16 and didn’t really have a focus on love like Valentine’s Day today does more so on whatever purification rights might be pertinent to the culture at the time, because March was kind of traditionally war time in much of the antiquated past. Lupercality was celebrated in February to honor the Februa which were instruments of the purification for the upcoming war season.
Claire:
Very cool.
Tim:
Actually, similar practices to this took place between several different areas in the antiquated world, including, but not limited to the Hittites and several Greek city states, really, mostly places from an indo European mythological background. It’s more similar to our background here in the United States, in Roman territories. However, these rights were usually kind of gross. They had really unsavory fertility rates for women, lots of violence and some really violent drinking spells, along with feasts, which, I guess that kind of carries over, but it was supposed to be the last major celebration, you know, again, in quotes, before wartime. I think we’re definitely better off now than then, though, at least in terms of celebration. Certainly, it’s definitely for the best. There became a shift away from that into the early to late Middle Ages.
Claire:
Yeah, I think I definitely prefer getting a couple chocolates over some violent fertility. That’s just me. The English Middle Ages are actually a huge time of growth for this holiday. Funny enough that you mentioned them. It said that the first romantic Valentine’s poem ever written was from that time. Geoffrey Chaucer’s 14th century work, Parliament of fowls is a poem about birds choosing their mates on St Valentine’s Day. Some of the final lines of the poems, modern English translation, they read the following
“St Valentine who art full high loft. Thus sing the small fowls for your sake. Now welcome summer with your son soft that this winter’s weather does oft shake. Well, have they cause to rejoice full oft, since each a marriage with its mate does make.”
We’re seeing here a yearly joyful tradition on the Saints Day, where there is a choice of mate, a choice made by love and romantic connection. It’s a very cute poem. I really enjoy it. This is one of the first media pieces to begin truly popularizing the Day as a holiday for lovers. And a century or two later, we also see a nod to the holiday in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Ophelia sings the following to Hamlet as sort of a proclamation of love.
Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s Day, all in the morning, bedtime, and I am a maid at your window to be your Valentine. From here, we continue to see Valentine’s Day referenced more and more commonly in popular media as more of a romantic holiday. But those are some of the really interesting traditional routes.
Tim:
These were really cool, really sets like a high bar for what to do for my girlfriend.
Claire:
Big shoes to fill. Yeah, no kidding. New Shakespeare
Tim:
One thing about love, actually, I guess, is corporations kind of went on it too, you know. With all the excitement, I suppose there’s some money to be made, you know, yeah, better for worse, however you feel about that, really, it wasn’t uncommon, actually, in the late Middle Ages, particularly in England, for people to start making small cards to give to each other. You know, as like a call back to St Valentine’s Day. And honestly, I mean, I love cards. I’m sure most people do.
Claire:
Me too.
Tim:
They’re very thoughtful. Um, but now, after English colonization of North America, we, here in the United States, have kind of adopted that as well. You know, you give cards, or in kindergarten, you might give cards to your classmates. But eventually corporations took notice of this. You know, way back, Hallmark, actually, in the early 20th century, 1910, exactly, was founded, and a few years later, they started to mass produce these cards. I’m sure everyone’s seen them in their local grocery or CVS stores or whatever. Yeah, these exploded. They got super popular because everyone thought you know “oh that’s easy”, and since then, a consumerist tradition was born. More and more companies started to get in on it, whether it be, you know, chocolates, flowers, whatever. Every year, actually, more companies want to get on that cash cow that is giving back to your loved ones. And that kind of brings us to where we are now, actually, according to the National Retail Federation, consumers plan to spend $25.8 billion on Valentine’s Day as of 2024 that is. It’s almost $186 per person.
Claire:
Yikes! That is a lot of flowers!
Tim:
Right?
Claire:
Well, you know that’s good and well and good for the US, especially looking at the big US corporations, especially well and good for them, but what about other places? You know, surely, across different countries across the world, that’s got to differ at least a little bit from place to place, especially traditionally.
Tim:
Yeah, yeah, it does, because of the prevalence of Western culture and media or whatever. We do see Valentine’s Day kind of explode in popularity in places where, historically, it wasn’t really at recently, actually in Türkiye, formerly known as Turkey, Valentine’s Day, there is called Sevgililer Günü, which literally translates to Lover’s Day, which is pretty nice, and that’s celebrated on what we have is Valentine’s Day, february 14. It’s not really as much about love for your partner, but more so a day of showing appreciation for people that you do love. So actually, it’s extremely common for people there to just give gifts to their mom, which is really cute.
Claire:
That’s so sweet!
Tim:
Flowers or chocolates. Ireland actually stays a bit more like traditional in quotes, because of its proximity to England. But the fun here with the cards that they do give is, it’s all anonymous. So part of the fun is you try to figure out, you know, who sent it to you. Which I can only imagine how much fun that could be, especially if you’re like a little kid with a class full of people. I think is really cool. Concerning valentine’s day too. Is the Philippines, there people will usually have these mass weddings. Sometimes there’s up to, you know, a couple hundred couples. The best part is that usually these celebrations are provided by the government to the people, including gifts money, organization, even guest accommodations, whether it be local or more official governments.
Claire:
That’s really interesting, that the government provides for that. Speaking of mass weddings, the government definitely wasn’t providing for people back in the Saint Valentine era. No, like I said, we’re talking a little bit more about why St Valentine is the patron saint of lovers. And back in the Roman the Roman era of Emperor. Claudius, the second the Emperor, actually banned marriage because he thought that unmarried men made better soldiers. Our Saint Valentine went directly against these orders this ban, and began marrying couples in secret. This was supposedly for a couple reasons, partially to keep some men out of the army who just simply didn’t want to be in it, who didn’t want to fight for the country, but also to fight for the freedom of romance. Stories like this are a big reason why Valentine’s Day is a lovers holiday, and are really interesting to hear a good old fashioned love story where the forbidden romance prevails, you know, and Valentine’s Day is a celebration of different types of love – to me.
Tim:
No, I totally get that. I think it’s really cool to see that kind of thing, especially that being something that we valued even as far back as Roman antiquity. Yeah, there are actually a ton of different ways that people will celebrate marriage across the world too, which is super vast and it makes sense, but it’s just super fascinating to kind of step back and think about. In Germany, for example, it’s pretty common for a new couple to participate in something called the Baumstamm sagen where together, they’ll saw a tree trunk or part of one, and have to show their cooperation as a couple for the coming years. It’s kind of cute.
Claire:
That is really cute. It makes me think about near here, we have the Amherst Historical Society, and out front of there, there were originally two trees, but one of them fell but it was two trees that were planted after a couple got married, and one is called the groom and one is called the bride, and that’s supposed to sort of symbolize their everlasting love.
Tim:
Aw, that’s pretty cute.
Claire:
Right?
Tim:
Wow. in… in Eastern European countries, mostly formerly the Soviet Union, who massively practice Ethan Eastern Orthodoxy. That is, there’s more of a focus on, you know, the seriousness of what the wedding means, more of kind of a look at coming of age, as compared to this grandiose celebration of love. There is love, there is a focus. But the latter half of the marriage usually has to do with the profundity of these two people entering adulthood together, and what that means being one after the marriage. And I think that’s kind of beautiful too.
Claire:
Yeah, definitely
Tim:
One thing I think are really cool are Hindu weddings where it’s really common to wear vibrant colors, reds and oranges, which is pretty refreshing as compared to the kind of like our
traditional whites, traditional pastels.
Claire:
It’s more bright.
Tim:
Exactly. There’s a really cool tradition of getting married under a structure called the Mandap, which is considered a holy space. And then a tradition called the Juta Chupai, the groom must take his shoes off before entering, because, you know, it’s this holy space. And in this opportunity, the sisters, or women, cousins of the bride, will come up and, you know, steal his shoes and run off with them, and he can’t get them back unless he pays them some sort of whether it be a small gift or some small amount of money.
Claire:
There’s a lot of really interesting traditions that we’re seeing across the world, and I’m sure that there’s even more that we definitely didn’t talk about today, but they’re really just, again, very interesting customs, and it is just so so cool to me to hear about how marriage is celebrated across cultures. Weddings are, in my opinion, and experience, at least, some of the most beautiful and exciting events. Looking at the traditions and customs that you’ve described, we definitely see some differences in what people prioritize in their weddings also, and I think that this is something that deserves a deeper look as well. Why do people get married? I mean, on the topic of Valentine’s Day, or lovers’ holiday, one reason is to celebrate and sort of formalize one’s love. And this is really prevalent among my family and the people that lived around me growing up, you know, I’ve grown up hearing stories about true love and seeing it in media, you know, a fairy tale happy ending where two people fall in love after trials and tribulations and end up getting married. You look at Disney movies, stuff like that, and you see a big wedding party celebrating true love and a happy ending and all that jazz. You know, the knight fights the dragons, saves the princess, and it’s very romanticized. So especially around here, we also sort of see that love isn’t necessarily what always gets emphasized in marriages as well. You know, across cultures, we see arranged marriages for all sorts of reasons, religious ones, dowries, confirmed compatibility, political or societal gain, even protection of the bride, all sorts of reasons in many different cultures, and I think as a society, when we don’t really necessarily understand that without doing intense research into every single culture ever, which is near impossible. I think it’s really easy to villainize marriages like this in again, a society where we’re just not as used to it. And like with any marriage, there can definitely be bad cases of it where things go wrong or people are exploited or hurt. But arranged marriages are actually pretty common in some parts of the world and can be done in a really healthy and safe way that results in lifelong happiness. It’s just it’s something that we’re not necessarily used to. And the idea of marrying solely for love is a very new thing, even with our Western Design of romance and love and marrying for that. And we have, you know, a pretty high divorce rate. So I think there’s a lot to be talked about in terms of love versus lust in our societies. And even again, looking at, you know, again Western and Europe, love is a new priority. We’ve seen arranged marriages for years and years and years and again, looking back at the Roman era, you know, we are talking about St Valentine, marrying people for love or to get out of the army. But you know, again, that isn’t necessarily the only reason it could be a financial thing, it could be, again, a protection thing, like I mentioned earlier. There’s all sorts of reasons, and I think that’s really interesting.
Tim:
Yeah, I would agree. I think, like you said, it’s very easy to forget that love as explicitly romance or marriage as explicitly love, explicitly, being from romance is very much just recently in vogue in the grand scheme of things, only just from literature. You know, these stories about knights and brides and dragons and whatever. And I mean, it’s hard to forget that that has a very real impact on how we see the world today. I mean, I actually knew somebody at my high school that was part of a arranged marriage, and it I just goes to show that it’s by no means like this antiquated thing or something that only happens in some form of other sector of society, because it is a very normal thing that we just don’t really see as much in our own pop culture, absolutely.
Claire:
And I think it’s like you said, it’s really easy to sort of centralize on what we do know and what we have experienced. And there’s always that innate human fear of the unknown, and fear breeds hate, which is unfortunately, very common, right? And I think it’s really important to sort of check ourselves and say, like, Are we, are we just looking at what we’re used to and pushing our ideals onto other people? And is that why we’re villainizing this? And I think, I think as a generation, we’re doing a really good job being more open minded.
Tim:
I would agree. And it’s, it’s really wonderful to see, in my opinion, it seems especially poignant that we talk about this surrounding Valentine’s Day, which is a day of acceptance and love for the people around you, or the people that you care about, or the people that maybe you don’t even know, just be nice to them.
Yeah, that’s really beautiful.
Claire:
And I mean, looking back at weddings and marriage, they really are truly unique across cultures, and the reasons for them are always changing. That said, it’s seriously interesting to take a look at why and how people celebrate their wedding days and their love. And I think we could spend a whole another episode talking about non romantic love. You know, we see platonic love, familial love, like you mentioned about what country was it, where it was they were giving the gifts to their mothers, and it was…
Tim:
in Türkiye.
Claire:
Yes and self love? Even all of these are, you know, they’re prioritized in different places, across time and space. And I think it’s really interesting to be able to take a look at that for Valentine’s Day as well. Like, you know, how do you celebrate not necessarily just your romantic partner, but how do you celebrate your closest friends and love that you have for them, the love that you have for your family and the love that you have for yourself. And I think that all of these are really beautiful and super important on this holiday, just as much as romantic love. So, you know, celebrate Valentines however you want to, whatever Valentines means to you. I’m sure that St Valentine would love to see all of it. That said, we are starting to run out of time. So Tim, do you want to round us out here? Anything you want to say?
Yeah, thank you. Claire, well, I just want to say thank you to everyone for tuning into our show today. Another huge thanks to our team members and our collaborators with anthroHub, especially our tech crew; they’re great. Stay connected! You can find us on Instagram at anthro.mp3. You can also find our sources, transcripts of each episode and more in our AnthroHub show notes. I was one of your hosts today, Tim, joined by our other host, Claire and our lovely, lovely tech crew. If you enjoyed this episode, I think you’ll love our next one. Keep an eye out for our Instagram for future updates on shows, specials and events. Catch us next time and friends. Have a great day.