Valentine’s Day rituals are easy, but what comes next?
If you find yourself troubled this morning by a vague sense of misgiving that you have forgotten something that is a) completely pointless and b) certain to get you into a whole heap of trouble, I can help. Tomorrow is St Valentine’s Day: “Haile Bishop Valentine, whose day this is, / All the aire is thy Diocis”, as John Donne cheerily observed in his Epithalamium, or Marriage Song on the Lady Elizabeth and Count Palatine Being Married on St Valentine’s Day.
A rich accretion of legend surrounds the identity of St Valentine; and a widely distributed collection of body parts said to be his is preserved in churches from Dublin to Madrid. The strongest candidate for the true martyr’s crown seems to be a third-century Bishop of Terni, in Umbria, who was imprisoned, tortured and slain on an unlucky trip to Rome. But amid the nimbus of hagiography and legend that surrounds the saint, one thing is clear: he is absolutely not responsible for the horrid superfluity of scentless crimson roses, half-witted teddy-bears, novelty lingerie and heartshaped shortbread biscuits that clutters the shops at this time of year. For that we can probably blame Chaucer.
While Chaucer almost certainly didn’t invent the connection between the martyred Umbrian bishop and hooking up, he makes the first recorded reference to it in The Parlement of Foules,
a reverie on love in which the “noble goddesse Nature” presides over a gathering of birds “on Saint Valentine’s Day, / When every fowl comes there to chose his mate”. Entering a sylvan landscape populated with allegorical figures of love – Beauty, Youth, Flattery and Desire – Chaucer’s narrator passes through a gate, on one side of which is written an invitation to enter “that blissful place where hearts are healed”, while the other side warns of a passage to a place of disdain and danger, where the only safety lies in eschewing love altogether. It is a warning worth heeding as you contemplate the best way to your true love’s heart tomorrow.
In principle, the rituals of Valentine’s Day are easy to observe. You take a fancy to someone; you grasp the handy annual opportunity to express your admiration in symbolic form: a card, a flower, a poem, a Love Heart sweetie (“Luv U 24/7”) that has gone all sticky from being clutched in your sweaty fist. Your sweetheart accepts your tribute with a smile – and there you are, as firmly pair-bonded as Chaucer’s turtle doves. The problem is, what next?
When it comes to romance, getting started is comparatively straightforward. It is the carrying on that is the problem, especially for those of us “as are of riper years”, as the Book of Common Prayer tactfully puts it. Our dancing days may be over, our daily discourse as tetchy as the prenuptial Kate and Petruchio, but on Valentine’s Day it is hard to stifle the hope that beneath the quotidian irritations, some glimmer remains of the spark that brought us together.
As for how to celebrate the love that endures once romance has fled, the good news is that it probably doesn’t much matter what you do, so long as you do something. The mere fact of having remembered is probably enough. “The blood runs thinner, yet the heart / Remains as ever deep and tender”, wrote the Russian poet Fyodor Tyutchev. Even so, it might be best to avoid the scentless roses and the novelty knickers.