|
02/05/2011 Valentine’s DayI’ve always suspected the origins of Valentine’s Day. Here is the Wikipedia explanation:Saint Valentine’s Day, commonly shortened to Valentine’s Day, is an annual commemoration held on February 14th celebrating love and affection between intimate companions. The day is named after one or more early Christian martyrs named Valentine and was established by Pope Gelasius I in 500 AD. It was deleted from the Roman calendar of saints in 1969 by Pope Paul VI, but its religious observance is still permitted. It is traditionally a day on which lovers express their love for each other by presenting flowers, offering confectionery, and sending greeting cards (known as “valentines”). The day first became associated with romantic love in the circle of Geoffrey Chaucer in the High Middle Ages, when the tradition of courtly love flourished.You can see there is no mention of “Hallmark Cards” specifically but they did slip in the “greeting cards” thing which, I may be mistaken, was probably NOT around in the year 500. So now we fast forward and the TV commercials are all about diamonds, gold jewelry, etc. A significant commercial escalation brought to you by the marketing industry. And of course Hallmark Cards has to raise the ante for their own market. Now they are trying to redefine Valentine’s Day as a family affair where you start giving cards (Hallmark Cards, of course) to your “family”. So is the dog part of the family too? Bone scented valentines? Back to the definition ... what happened to “intimate companions” and “lovers”? My guess is there just wasn’t enough profit margin in that narrow category so we had to spread the |