What do you think of when you think of Valentine\u2019s Day? Perhaps rushing off to the stationary store after work to choose the perfect card with which to express your feelings towards a loved one? Dinner reservations at a fancy restaurant? Roses, dark chocolates, and other gifts and confections? Whatever Valentine\u2019s Day may look like to you, chances are that it is a far cry from the history surrounding this holiday \u2013 or at least we hope so. Here are a few interesting facts about this most romantic of holidays, from your friends here at 2nd Generation Chimneys.<\/p>\n
The fact of the matter is that there is no definitive history as to how Valentine\u2019s Day came to be. There are a few different saints with variations of the name Valentine, for example. One of the most prevalent legends, and one certainly in keeping with the romantic nature of the holiday as we know it today, pertains to a priest serving during the 3rd<\/sup> century in Rome. Under the rule of Emperor Claudius II, who believed that young men made for better soldiers if unfettered by marriage, it was illegal for young men to marry. A true believer in love, Valentine would marry young couples in secret. Until, at least, he was found out, and met a very unpleasant end for his crimes.<\/p>\n Like many of our modern holidays, Valentine\u2019s Day can also be traced back to pagan ritual. Lupercalia, as the pagan festival is known, was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, a god of agriculture. As is often the case with Roman celebrations, the details of this celebration are unfit to detail here. Suffice to say that, while there is certainly a touch of the amorous in the proceedings, the festival was a far cry from what we associate with Valentine\u2019s Day today.<\/p>\n How, then, did our modern version of Valentine\u2019s Day come to be? The answer may lie in, of all places, 14th<\/sup> century poetry; particularly, in the writings of Geoffrey Chaucer. Famed for his Canterbury Tales<\/em>, Chaucer may well be the very first writer to associate Valentine\u2019s Day with romantic love, in the manner of which we are familiar with it today. His The Parliament of Fowls<\/em> details the dream-vision of a narrator consumed with the idea of romantic love and the natural order of finding a mate. Valentine\u2019s Day is mentioned by name a number of times, as the narrator witnesses a parliament of eagles vying for the hand \u2013 or, perhaps more aptly, the wing \u2013 of a mate.<\/p>\n Whatever you may think of the holiday\u2019s sordid and convoluted history, we here at\u00a02nd Generation Chimneys hope you have a wonderful Valentine\u2019s Day with the special someone in your life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What do you think of when you think of Valentine\u2019s Day? Perhaps rushing off to the stationary store after work to choose the perfect card with which to express your feelings towards a loved one? Dinner reservations at a fancy restaurant?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[95],"tags":[278],"class_list":["post-1950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chimney","tag-happy-valentines-day"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.2ndgenerationchimneys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.2ndgenerationchimneys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.2ndgenerationchimneys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.2ndgenerationchimneys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.2ndgenerationchimneys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1950"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.2ndgenerationchimneys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1951,"href":"https:\/\/www.2ndgenerationchimneys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1950\/revisions\/1951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.2ndgenerationchimneys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.2ndgenerationchimneys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.2ndgenerationchimneys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}