St. Valentine’s Day
St. Valentine’s day is sort of the springtime Halloween for the sentimental. When I was a little kid, we passed out Valentines to all of our classmates and enjoyed candy treats. (All I was concerned about is getting the most Valentines!) As is typical with everything baby-boomers hold onto from our childhoods (I think many of us suffer from arrested development) this holiday has become embarrassingly exaggerated, not to mention a commercial success. The average guy spends about $150 on his sweetheart, while his sweetheart spends a total of $40 on him. (I heard that on the news - and if the statistics are correct, it’s another example of male subjection.) 
Valentine’s day always struck me as an icky-swishy femme-fatale sort of holiday. Not very manly in the least. Somehow, the American male has succumbed to marketing, and like it or not, has been trained to believe he has to prove his love for his significant other on this day. It’s an artificial holiday - like St. Patrick’s day, or Secretaries day.
St Valentine was a martyr. That is pretty much all we know. When I was young, a Hallmark Hall of Fame commercial showed a handsome St. Valentine, in prison, sending messages of God’s love to fellow persecuted Christians. Nice segue for the stationary market. Florists, candy makers, jewelers, lingerie manufacturers, restaurateurs, all caught on.
The origins of the feast are of course pagan, which accords much better with our contemporary celebration of the ‘holiday’. As with most pagan festivals, the Church Christianized what had been known as the feast of Lupercalia. Interestingly enough, the feast accommodated a festival of purification as well as fertility in Roman times. Hence the Christian feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, followed by the feast of St. Valentine - which was not necessarily intended to be connected with lovers. Pope Gelasius is the man who changed everything.
Obviously, St. Valentine’s day retained many of it’s pagan characteristics throughout the ages, but most especially in our neo-pagan times. The gifts men purchase from Victoria Secret pretty much brings it all back to the fertility thing. Check out “The Origins of St. Valentine’s Day” for a brief history of the celebration of this day.
People come into our Store looking for Catholic St. Valentine’s cards and gifts - it’s not a big market in Catholic retail. However, we now carry a holy card of the saint - and maybe a novelty nun figure holding a heart - gag me. That is pretty much it. Some Catholic entrepreneur would do well to create product for Catholics who want to celebrate St. Valentine’s day. Please don’t be too schmaltzy. The St. Patrick’s day crap is bad enough!
Make up your own mind as to the efficacy of St. Valentine’s day.
February 13th, 2007 at 9:12 pm
Thinking back to my one graduate level course in Industrial Relations I took from a Business School Prof at the U of Minn, I’ve decided after reading Terry’s post that Leaflet needs to get with the times and modernize.
Only two products for one of the most important holidays of the year. How do you expect to expand, grow and conglomeratize, Terry?
A holy card and a novelty nun is all you have?
Why I’d bet that within 24 hours I could get my cousin, Charlie Chan, to come up with a couple of hundred suitable products for the 21st Century Catholic Market.
And I just read in the paper today that our mother country, the United Kingdom, is going to be offering Viagra in all of their Target stores.
C’mon, Terry, get your tail over to Target, a three mile drive and get the Valentines concession for their 17,000 stores. Think big! Be imaginative!
The Advice to the Lovelorn columnist on the blog of one of the few finalists for the 2007 Catholic Blog Awards is privy to information that the Archangel Raphael and four archangel pals have universal rights to Heaven’s franchise for matchmaking.
Think of it Terry. A few quick prayers to St Raphael and you might get that Tarzhay franchise for the whole galaxy. There’s an awful lot of singles out there looking for Mr. or Ms. Right with whom to spend the rest of their lives within the holy bonds of Matrimony!
February 14th, 2007 at 2:50 am
Mamma mia! And over here we are celebrating Saints Cyril and Methodius, co-patrons of Europe. Te Deum at Matins, Gloria at Mass, the works! But oooh, how I crave a piece of chocolate.
February 14th, 2007 at 9:15 am
Happy Valentine’s Day anyway, Terry:)
(Geez, I like Saint Patrick - the day may be overblown, but he was a very good man)…