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Saturday 31 March 2007

Valentines Day Introspection

Rites de Passage: a post-Valentine’s Day introspection
Punam Khaira Sidhu

THERE was consternation in my brother’s home this Valentine’s Day. My cute teenaged niece couldn’t make up her mind about what to wear. Was is it going to be the red mini or the red trousers with the mini top. Choices, choices, choices! “Well whatever it’s going to be, it’s got to be red, with lots of skin showing” she said, as her father glowered menacingly. As she sat debating clothes with a set of cute, confused young girlfriends and her indulgent mom, I couldn’t help reflecting on how times had changed.

Red the colour of Karl Marx, and socialism is today the colour of all that represents capitalism: Coke, Cable TV and Valentine’s Day. A festival associated with a pagan ritual, the cruel King Claudius, and a tender-hearted priest named Valentine, has fusilladed into the latest icon for our consumer society. It is fuelled by card companies, soft toy manufacturers, candy, coke and assorted clothing manufacturers. They have clogged the channels on TV for the past month. The so-called Youth Channels, MTV and Channel V, the Star and Zee networks, Sony and even “sada” Punjabi channels such as Punjab Today and Alpha Punjabi were full of barely clad young things, espousing the cause of Saint Valentine.

Saint Valentine’s Day traces its roots to a pagan ritual associated with the feast of Lupercalia, commemorating young men’s rites of passage to the heathen god Lupercus. In ancient Rome, February 14 was the feast of the goddess Juno, who is associated with marriage and women. The next day i.e. February 15 would begin the celebrations for the Feast of Lupercalia. The lives of young boys and girls at that time were strictly segregated. One of the rituals associated with this festival was the drawing of names of Roman girls by boys out of a jar with a slot. The boy would then have, as a companion, the girl whose name he drew, for the rest of the festival. Sometimes these young ones married. Thus started the custom of young men selecting young women for Valentines.

At around this time, Emperor Claudius II of Rome was engaged in bloody battles. He found recruiting men into his army Leagues very difficult. Over a period of time, he began to believe that it was because men did not want to leave their wives and families. He, therefore, banned marriages and engagements. Valentine was a priest in Rome, in the days of “cruel Claudius II”, who married couples secretly. For this, he was sentenced to death by beating him with clubs and to have his head cut off. He suffered martyrdom, in the year 270 on the 14th day of February. Later the Christian Church in an attempt to do away with the pagan rituals in the Feast of Lupercalia, substituted the name of maidens with that of Saints. Pope Gelasius ordered this change in the lottery custom. Thus began the ritual of young men selecting Saints, as patrons, whose lives they would try to emulate during the coming year.

Out of the tradition for men to give girls they admired handwritten messages of affection with Saint Valentine’s name in it, emerged the present day Valentine cards. The first true Valentine card was sent in 1415 by a Frenchman, Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife, from the Tower of London, where he was imprisoned after the Battle of Agincourt. It was thought that birds also chose their mate for the year on February 14. Pigeons and doves are birds which mate for life and, therefore, came to be used as a symbol of “fidelity.”

Today, America celebrates this day with fervour. In terms of cards sent, it is ranked second in popularity only to Christmas. Children make a decorated box with a slot in the top for the Valentine’s day party at school. During the party, they slip valentines into their classmates’ Valentines’ Box. The first US made valentines called “Worcester valentines were crafted in the 1830s by a college student named Esther Howland. John McLaughlin, a New York printer, created the “Vinegar valentines”. These comic valentines were printed on cheap paper in bright colours and made fun of old maids and others. American cartoonist Charles Howard also popularised what were called “Penny dreadfuls” — comic cards with dreadful designs which sold for a penny.

There’s a Valentine day card for everyone — parents, sweethearts, spouses, teacher and even your dog! Cards, flowers especially the ubiquitous red rose, candy, perfume et all wrapped in red with glitter and long-suffering hearts pierced with arrows were favourite Valentine Day gifts.

The departmental stores of the city beautiful added wine, cheese and munchies to the list, this year. In the schools, the nuns and brothers and other principals had counselled their charges to show restraint.

The cops had geared up for where the real action was to be: “the geri route”. But the real dilemma was my niece’s and that of every nubile young thing: “What if they didn’t get a single valentine?” The even greater dilemma was that of cautious parents: “How to deal with rampant young teenaged hormones as they tried to do what advertisements and commercials expected of them?”!

Well, Valentine’s Day came and went. There were some hits and some misses. Cupids arrows have a way of finding their mark. My little niece and her friends also collected a lot of valentines but they showed restraint and came straight home after college for an all girls bash. My brother was a happy father this Valentine’s Day as he reflected, “At the end of the day family values and socialisation i.e. “sanskars”, still do matter. Not all the temptations and satellite TV can take that away from us”.

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