Shoebox Valentines

Hey everyone :) Sorry this is a few days late, but I've been a wee bit busy. Bakeries do that around holidays where it's traditional but time-consuming to send loved ones edible gifts.

I hope you all had a happy Valentine's Day. Do you know, I heard someone complaining about how it was a ridiculous holiday. They protested that it only got started because of something called the Valentine's Day Massacre, and the holiday card companies leaped on some random event and turned it into a celebration of lovey-dovey goo-goo money making schemes.

I chuckled not-so-quietly to myself. The misinformation that travels around this watery planet makes for a most amusing evening with nothing better to do than trawl around on the internet.

In fact, there has been more than one 'Saint Valentine' throughout recorded history. The first one popped up a long, long time ago, before the calendar had even reached quadruple digits. None of the originals had anything to do with romance outright, that much is true. But the heart-throb aspect of the holiday was adopted long before Hallmark started making cheap, sappy movies. When Courtly Love was popular (that means professions of deep emotion, hand kisses, noble deeds, and an honor-bound lack of hanky-panky) some king decided to write fanfiction accounts about one of the original Saint Valentine's.

You see, the original story, as best we have it, is that Saint Valentine (the one in question) was captured by a Pagan dude. The Pagan dude thought Saint Valentine was the bomb. So he tried to convert the Saint out of Christianity, in order to save Valentine from being sentenced to death for...well, being a Christian. But Valentine was all, 'No, how about YOU convert to Christianity, yo?'*

So Valentine was sentenced to death. But before he died, he performed a miracle by curing the blindness of his jailer's daughter.

Years later, Ye Olde Kinge of the Courtly Love era decided to make a subtle change. Now, the story reads that in his last moments Saint Valentine sent out a love letter. Often the letter is sent to the jailer's daughter (remember the blind one?).

And so, with a slight twist, history acquired a new love-based holiday. It wasn't until centuries later that a bunch of gangsters committed a small but still technically mass-murder against a bunch of other gangsters in what would come to be known as the Valentine's Day Massacre. The Hallmark cards were once handmade, and the sentiments weren't always so mechanically manufactures, but the idea of spreading love on V-Day is older than anyone's great-great-great-grandparents can remember.

So, again, forgive me for the late update. But I hope you all had a wonderful Valentine's Day anyhow, and continue to do so in the coming years!

Also, as a side-note, I'm now going to try and post AT LEAST once a week. I'll also be starting up a vlog, probably on the same basis. See you then!



*The exchange may not have used these words exactly