By Pierre Ratte
Happy Valentine’s Day, Palentine’s Day, Galentine’s Day or Self-Love Day. Whatever floats your boat or blows your hair back, it’s great to live in Sonoma County!
Whatever the weather, Feb. 14 is a day to choose love. It’s a day to connect with others. It’s a day to give or receive a card, eat chocolate, eat candy, recognize a friend or maybe break the ice to initiate a special friendship.
The history of Valentine’s Day is disputed, but there is no disputing its popularity has grown. Whichever way you choose to celebrate Valentine’s Day, enjoy the magic of uplifting people, even yourself!
Fun facts: Pope Galasius declared Feb. 14 St. Valentine’s Day in 496 C.E.; he served as pope for less than four years. Some say the Christian holiday suppressed a Roman fertility feast, Lupercalia, where men ran around the Palentine hill, essentially naked, whipping women with strips of hide from sacrificial animals to promote fertility. Though still on the Catholic Church’s list of saints, in 1969 St. Valentine ceased to be canonically sanctioned for worship—though he remains patron saint of beekeeping and love.
Geoffrey Chaucer, of Canterbury Tales fame, mentions Valentine’s Day in his poem, Parliament of Foules (fowls), describing birds competing for mates in February 1381. Shakespeare upped the love connection in Hamlet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “Good morrow, friends. Saint Valentine is past, begin these wood-birds to couple now,” published in 1600.
By the 1700s, the practice of writing intricately designed love notes on Valentine’s Day flourished. Then in the mid-1800s, manufactured lace and ribboned love notes made by a female entrepreneur named Esther Howland replaced handmade cards. Daughter of a stationer, a graduate of Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, she earned the nickname “Mother of the American Valentine.” Her assembly line production of fancy cards dropped the price from $1 to 5 cents; in her first year of business, 1848, she grossed $5,000—approximately $200,000 today.
Around the same time, in 1861, Cadbury invented the heart-shaped chocolate box. Sweethearts candy started in 1866 as a conversation starter. Sayings on Necco’s (New England Confectionery Company) Sweethearts change yearly. Hallmark expects to sell 140 million cards and Americans will spend more than $20 billion on cards and gifts in 2025 according to the National Retail Federation.
