You’ve Got Mail

As we ring in the new year, the next holiday is right around the quarter. Around the corner is February 14th, Valentine’s day.

My whole life I was never a “Valentine’s Day type of girl.” I would always say, “Valentine’s day is a commercial holiday created by Hallmark and Hersey.” Does anyone know the actual story of Valentine’s day?

The PG version is, from February 13 to 15, Romans celebrated with the feast of Lupercalia.  At this feast, the Romans sacrificed goats and dogs, and then they would take the hide of the animals they just sacrificed and whip the women with them. Women were hit constantly, and enduring awful things at this festival.

That’s where the celebration and the day derives from. The name actually has nothing to do with the celebration.

The day got its name because on February 14th, Emperor Claudius II executed two men both named Valentine. Their deaths were honored by the Catholic church with the celebration of St. Valentine’s Day. If you want to read the more gruesome and in depth version, you can read that here.

The day we know only came to be due to many people down the line changing, so apparently, I was not that off. The romantic ideology of valentines day quite actually came from Hallmark and Hersey, because the true story is nothing about romance.

This day that originated with murder and whippings is now a day to celebrate love, with chocolate and love letters, which also originated with the Romans and the Victorians.

The first love letter was written 5,000 years ago. As a way to show your significant others how much you mean to them.

You used to have to wait days to hear back from that special someone. Maybe that’s where the quote “absence makes the heart grow fonder comes from.” You having to wait and hear back from that special someone makes what they say mean so much more. I mean it was called snail mail for a reason. It was not this fast sending waiting seconds like a text or an email.

Now a days we have many more things pressing on our relationships. Today we have such things like “leaving someone on read”, when you someone just reads your text and does not respond, and your phone tells you that. It has become a giant flashing light of fights. In the time of snail mail people never had to worry about read receipts and guys liking other girls Instagram posts.

Letters just had a different connotation than text. They stopped and took their time to tell you their feelings about you. You did not get a quick text with a bunch of letters missing, you got a heartfelt letter, not “ily bb ttyl.” You got a real hand written letter that someone stopped to and put there time into.

I have always been told I will grow out it once I have someone to celebrate Valentines’ Day with, but thats still not true. This year will be my second time celebrating valentines’ day, with someone, the same someone, and I still don’t buy the archaic values.

If you really love someone then you should not just show it on one day a year, you should be showing them that you do 365 days a year.

So stop and take the time to write them a letter, let them experience joy and surprise when it comes in the mail, because believe it or not technology is not as useful when we are trying to reach hearts.