St Valentine's Day

Today is St Valentine's Day.

Over the last twenty years or so the day has developed from a fairly low-key event related to personal and private commemoration by lovers to a major commercial celebration.

Looking through the newspapers on Friday, Saturday and Sunday it seemed as if every other page was selling Valentine's Day merchandise. Window displays have used the theme to sell toiletries and clothes. The Dog's Trust suggest's sending a Valentine donation to one of the many unloved dogs in its care.

The day seems to be widening in significance from a "holiday" marked by couples to a more community-wide celebration of the abstract idea of love.

What is going on here? Is this the commercialisation of yet another event in the ritual year, in the same way that Christmas, Easter or New Year have been commercialised? Or is it a reassertion of the ancient and eternal "rite of spring", intruding itself into the modern commercial programme?

Above: the only Valentine card I received this year was from the Dog's Trust (which is okay - the last thing I would want is an anonymous spangley card arriving in the office mail and have to wonder who sent it).

Above: Heston Blumenthal recipes for St Valentine's Day.

Interesting to see this year that there is more emphasis upon specific food for St Valentine's Day. This is significant (to me at least) as in the pre-industrial period ritual days were always associated with the consumption of ritual food. The fact that new food is being invented rather than simply revived suggests that the event has captured the creative imagination.



Above (screenshot): the 1975 Peter Weir film Picnic at Hanging Rock opens with scenes of barely repressed "sapphic love" among girls at a private school in Edwardian Australia on St Valentine's Day 1900.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WcJpdg5Euk