A day to say I love you… 

St Valentine is the patron saint of lovers, epileptics and beekeepers, I found this information out with a quick google search and I have to be honest, I have never heard of any sort of connection with St Valentine and beekeeping or epilepsy before.

Looking further into this you really can go down a rabbit hole of connections with love and bees, there are depictions of Cupid the greek god of love being stung by bees, renaissance paintings of lovers been stung by bees to portray that love sometimes causes pain. The phrase the “birds and the bees’ comes to mind, from which we use to explain the basics of nature and reproduction which I guess involves love in most cases.

I was also quite surprised to learn that he was the patron saint of epilepsy, a condition I didn’t know even had a patron saint, but from what I have read, the most likely reason for this is that the word valentine is similar to the German word for ‘fallen’ – epilepsy was once known as the ‘falling sickness’ as it causes a person to fall when having a seizure. – no such romantic link there, except of course you could say that you ‘fall’ in love? 

Sending love letters or love notes was something that began in the 18th century, lovers and friends would send each other hand written notes of affection or poetry. Hallmark was the first company to actually sell valentines cards for purchase and this happened in 1915, according to the greeting card association valentines day has become the 2nd largest card buying holiday after Christmas with an estimated 145 million cards being sold each year.

The simplicity of a heartfelt handwritten poem or letter is something that I think is lost today, with small gestures of love being over powered with expensive gifts and extravagant ‘showy’ posts on social media in todays ‘go big or go home’ culture. I have a book that I have read countless times called ‘love letters of great men’ – the book contains love letters of famous men throughout history – Lord Nelson, John Keats, Victor Hugo, Charles Darwin, Lord Byron and Ludwig van Beethoven to name a few, these people were separated from the ones they loved because of war and work for months or possibly years on end, with nothing more than pen and paper to proclaim their feelings to one another, the bravery and honesty of baring all in a letter is something that has been lost to the ages, when we look at old letters or any poetry dated back to these times it seems people weren’t afraid to bare all their feelings, to say how they felt and really put themselves out there. I guess this may have been because they couldn’t just call each other on the phone everyday and talk for hours, or do a FaceTime, send a text or – see, like, share, each-others posts everyday on social media, they had to rely on letters to tell each other how they felt, and when you only have that one letter for perhaps a few weeks before you can make any other contact or send another letter, you would want to convey all your feelings to the best of your ability so that the person you love knew exactly how you felt, so that your bond remained strong.

This is one of my favourite letters from the book ‘love letters of great men’ , its probably the most famous letter in the book since part of it was featured in the first ‘sex and the city’ movie, so if your a fan you may recognise it! 

This letter is from Ludwig van Beethoven – when he died in 1827, three unsent love letters were found addressed to his ‘immortal beloved’ the letters were not dated by year only by month and day, and the person known as his immortal beloved has not been confirmed – although there was speculation of it being a Viennese woman called “Antonie Brentano’.

Good Morning – 7th July
‘Even in my bed my ideas yearn towards you, my Immortal Beloved, here and there joyfully, then again sadly, awaiting from Fate, whether it will listen to us. I can only live, either altogether with you or not at all. Yes, I have determined to wander about for so long far away, until I can fly into your arms and call myself quite at home with you, can send my soul enveloped by yours into the realm of spirits – yes, I regret, it must be. You will get over it all the more as you know my faithfulness to you; never another one can own my heart, never – never! O God, why must one go away from what one loves so, and yet my life W. as it is now is a miserable life. Your love made me the happiest and unhappiest at the same time. At my actual age I should need some continuity, sameness of life – can that exist under our circumstances? Angel, I just hear that the post goes out every day – and must close therefore, so that you get the L. at once. Be calm – love me – to-day – yesterday.
What longing in tears for you – You – my Life – my All – farewell. Oh, go on loving me – never doubt the faith-fullest heart
Of your beloved
L
Ever thine.
Ever mine.
Ever ours.’

I often hear people refer to this day as a massive hype over nothing, or refer to it as a day invented by the greeting card companies, we know this not to be true of course looking at the timescale of when it all began, I often hear people saying things like ‘ you should make an effort in your relationship everyday, we don’t need a day for it’ and while that’s true, its not something that comes easily to people in this current world, we live fast pace lives with both women and men working longer hours, with more pressure from all aspects of life be that social, work or other commitments, so sometimes the romantic aspect of our lives gets left in the background, valentines day is a day that reminds us all to take the time to tell each other we love each other, and gives us that little nudge to do something special for someone you care about, personally I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, we can all look for the negatives in every celebration, but why not just enjoy it!

Why not take the time to write a love letter to your special person this year? Do you do this already? Or if your single maybe write a letter to a dear friend, I don’t think there’s a soul out there who wouldn’t love to get a heartfelt letter. A friend of mine who I won’t name, but I’m sure she will know who she is when she reads this – one year when we were both single, we bought each other valentines cards, mine to her said wife and hers to me said husband, (I was obviously the masculine energy) it was really sweet and funny and silly but it made us both smile all day, love doesn’t have to be romantic.

I myself am not one for big public displays of affection, but a card with some lovely words inside or a cheesy poem, ordering a pizza and watching a movie, taking the time to appreciate what you have whether it be a romantic relationship or a really wonderful friendship.

So whether your planning a candlelit three course dinner, ordering pizzas or catching up with some friends to celebrate, let me know in the comments and have have a fabulous day… love to all…