Giving gifts on Valentine’s Day has been a tradition common to many countries. Some say because such occasion has been commercialized. Some believe it to be an important day to show love to loved ones.
Even before, Valentine’s Day is celebrated by giving love letters and later modified to giving flowers and chocolates until anything will do as long as it shows feelings of love. Early Valentine’s Day gifts were actually love letters, flowers, and chocolates. In most traditions, if not all, these conventional gifts have stayed.
Once in history, Valentine’s Day was marked as the second highest time, next to Christmas Day, people bought cards. Exchanging cards every 14th of February has been practiced long ago. The medieval Europeans had a tradition of exchanging love letters because they believed that birds began to mate on February 14. The city of Verona in Italy, where Shakespeare’s famous fictional characters Romeo and Juliet abode, gets around 1,000 letters for Juliet every 14th of February.
From the first Valentine’s Card made commercially in the 19th century, a variety of cards are now available in the market from hand-made and three-dimensional cards to designed electronic messages.
As time changes, celebration of Valentine’s Day has also been modified. Not only people exchange cards, they also start giving love tokens, flowers, chocolates.
Flowers as a gift probably started when Charles II of Sweden brought a Persian poetical art to his country. That art is called “The Language of Flowers.” Then history tells us how flowers have played an important role in people’s lives like passing secret messages with a lily or lilac.
Rose is the most popular flower given on February 14. Through the years, it has been one of the primary symbols of Valentine’s Day. In Roman mythology, it is the favorite flower of Venus, the goddess of love. Aside from love, a rose symbolizes peace and forgiveness too. A yellow rose means friendship and white for peace. A pink rose may mean friendship or romantic relationship. The famous red rose means strong and intense feeling of love. Hence, red roses are mostly seen during Valentine’s Day.
Besides a rose, there is a variety of flowers to choose from. These flowers usually have denoted meaning too. For instance, an Anemone means dying love. A Daisy means innocence. A Lily is purity, Fuchsia is elegance, Poppy is consolation, Snowdrop is hope, Sunflower is warmth feeling, and a red Tulip is a declaration of strong love while yellow means hopeless love.
A chocolate is another famous gift during this day. Some old traditions already include chocolates as Valentine’s Day gifts. Some manufacturers have made heart-shaped chocolates and decorated box of chocolates just for Valentine’s Day.
Cards, flowers, and chocolates are just traditional Valentine’s Day gifts today. Anything can be a gift like the carved wooden lovespoons in Wales. It is decorated either with hearts, keys, or padlocks symbolizing the “unlocking” and “locking” of someone else’s heart. Serving food, especially with aphrodisiac ingredients, can also be a gift. Gadgets are also popular gifts nowadays.
So, on Valentine’s Day, just about anything goes.
DANIELA OLIVEIRA
JUNE /2022
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