Patrick's irish pub

This letter is for all of you men folk who believe that Valentine's Day is just another holiday concocted to goad you (the average schmuck) into giving the other guy's business (the non-schmuck's one) a seasonal boost in sales. Yes, I'm writing to you guys who go around complaining that Valentine's Day is just another ploy to increase consumer spending regardless of consumer confidence. You're the ones who say that if you're not a florist, a teddy bear maker, or the candy man, there's nothing to celebrate.

Nothing to celebrate? Yeah right - tell me another one. Even if you haven't seen her in the past 24 days, you've surely thought about her at least half a dozen times in the past 24 hours. But guess what, there's more. In these past 24 hours, at least one other gentleman and one of his kin have been thinking about her too!

So the hard truth is that you're worried you can't afford to show her how you feel, and that someone's second cousin just might show you up on Valentine's Day. But the fact is that you can outdo that someone's second cousin; you just have to use your own creativity to figure out how. Now of course I could rededicate this letter to all the women you love as a way to get you fired up, but that wouldn't be my style. Your endless love should be incentive enough. But if you still need something more to come up with creative solutions to woo her, keep the objective of that someone's second cousin in mind as well.

Valentine's Day, February 14, is sweetheart's day - when people in love express their affection for each other in joyful and merry ways. But in whatever form, the message is the same - "Will you be my valentine?"

Valentines used to be reserved for young lovers; but nowadays grandparents, cousins, friends or even acquaintances of any age, take the occasion to express their affection through a small gift or a card from the assortment found at every stationery-store, book-shop and news-stand. In whimsical verse Ogden Nash* nostalgically recalls the "good old days" when everything was simpler: "All you had to do was take a sheet of paper and draw a heart with an arrow through it carrying the words "I love you", and sing it "Guess who" and shove it under the front door of your only beloved and ring the bell and run like a rabbit. One girl, one Valentine, and that was it".

The custom of celebrating St. Valentine's Day can be traced to those festivals, called Lupercalia. There were games and dancing and then each young man from an urn the name of the young maiden who would be his sweetheart for the coming year. February 14, the Roman date of the festival, thus became a day for young lovers. After the introduction of Christianity, pagan customs were suppressed, but the festival continued, and in the seventh century it began to be called St. Valentine's Day.

The origin of the name remains in doubt. Some historians link it to Valentine who became the patron saint of lovers after he was imprisoned by Emperor Claudius for secretly marrying couples contrary to the Emperor's order. Others say the name is a corruption of the French word "galantin" (a gallant or beau) And one further theory is that February 14 was chosen because birds traditionally began to mate on that day.

Whatever the origin, Valentine's Day has had a long and romantic history. The Roman conquerors carried the celebration to England, where pagan and Christian customs combined to form some of the enduring traditions. One was that the first person you saw on Valentine's Day would be your valentine. We know the custom was well established in Shakespeare's time, for Ophelia wanted to be "be time" at Hamlet's window. She sang:

St. Valentine's Day with all of its colorful lore was taken to the New World by the English settlers and lost none of its romantic appeal through the journey. Greeting-cards, usually hand-made by talented colonists, were works of art and beauty. Original verses appeared in carefully penned script on hand-painted cards, and for those unable to write their own verses a printed collection provided ready-made text for any situation, with answers included.

Later cartoons and grotesque drawings replaced the overly romantic valentines and parodies and sardonic rhymes were substituted for sentimental verses. Although the comic valentine has now disappeared and greeting-cards again express affection, the saccharine sentimentality is gone also and the messages are light, gay and sometimes humorous.

Loveland, Colorado, is known as a "sweetheart of a town in the Rockies". Each year as valentine's Day approaches the Loveland post-office has to recruit a staff of volunteers to help dispatch the 100,000 valentines sent from all over the United States for re-mailing. When the valentines leave Loveland, in addition to an imprint of Loveland's romantic sounding name they bear a picture of Cupid wearing a ten-gallon hat, a heart-shaped brand with the letter "L" and the following verse:

The volunteers carefully hand-stamp Cupid and the poetry on each envelope before sending it out as a valentine.