Happy Valentine's Day!

With the continuing popularity of Victorian style ornaments and home decor, and the paper crafts such as scrap-booking, it is easier than ever for the less skilled among us to create attractive Valentine cards and other Victorian-style items. Look for paper doilies, ribbons, romantic stickers and "scrap" art, along with undecorated cards, boxes, frames, and bookmarks to decorate. Group the different images by theme, such as "birds", "flowers," "pretty women," "children", and "clothing and accessories" (this includes hats, fans, gloves, and shoes). Collect tissue paper and wrapping paper in solid colors that coordinate with the other items you've assembled, and make sure you have a pair of scissors and some glue (preferably a glue stick rather than liquid glue), and you are ready to begin! Use the solid colored paper as a background for your design, or not; layer stickers and ribbons on top of doilies and scrap art, or not, and finish with glitter or tinsel or stick-on tiny rhinestones if you like. It is helpful to have some pictures of real Victorian valentines to look at, for inspiration; the current issue of Victoria magazine has a short article on the subject, so you might want to check the website at www.victoriamag.com to see the photos.

The finishing touch to a Valentine card is the text. Copy some lines from original Victorian cards, use the tried-and-true phrases such as "be mine", or write your own. Here are some words of wisdom from 1850 that you may want to keep in mind:

"Love.
Be cautious in yielding up the heart to a worthless object.
Do not choose a partner of a weak capacity.
Look not at a handsome exterior, and an assumed splendour, but regard the general deportment of the person on whom you fix your choice.
If you discover the inward weakness and incapacity of the individual, sever the connection, ere it be too late!"

"The requisites most essential in a lover are:
An agreeable person.
Accomplished manners.
Sweetness of temper and disposition.
Free from levity and anything bordering on the ridiculous.
An unblemished reputation.
A mind stored with virtuous principles."

Make your own Victorian Valentine's Day cards!

image from AuntiesClipArt.com
Although love letters have been written and sent for centuries, Valentine's Day cards, like Christmas cards, originated in England in the 19th century. Sending Valentines to friends and loved ones was almost immediately popular in England and Europe, especially when cheaper postal fees were introduced, and Valentine cards made the trip to America with relative ease. Until the 19th century, all Valentines -- whether sent on Valentine's Day or as a love token during the rest of the year -- were hand-made individually by their sender. Homemade valentine cards were made from paper doilies, red paper, ribbon, bits of lace, and pictures cut from magazines and newspapers.

Although many people still preferred to make them at home, valentines were available commercially in the early 1800s. Early Valentine's Day greeting cards could double as Christmas greeting cards, with a simple change of printed text. Both homemade and purchased cards often featured scenes and verses about brokenhearted lovers, unrequited love, and lovers kept apart by unsympathetic parents, long distances or, in the 1860s, the Civil War. One of the first American Valentine’s Day card manufacturers was a woman named Esther A. Howland, who, in 1847, began to copy an English card she had seen. She made samples of different designs, took orders from stores, hired local women to make them assembly-line style for sale, and built a business that eventually brought in $100,000 per year.

With the growing popularity of scrapbooking, there are a myriad of wonderful stamps, stickers, and decorative "scrap" paper in a Victorian style, featuring flowers, children, angels, pretty women, and other appropriate motifs. These, combined with red, pink, and white paper, white, red and gold lace and doilies, and ribbons, can be glued and arranged into delightful Victorian decorations for the home, and even used as their predecessors were: as love tokens.

-- Sources include The World Book Encyclopedia, From Your Valentine: Valentines from the Past, by Roselynn Ederer, The Etiquette of Love and Courtship, by Copper Beech Publishing, edited by Julie Lessels, and Manners & Morals of Yesterday, by Sam Tuttle.

The (brief) history of Valentine's Day.

image from AuntiesClipArt.com

Valentine's Day has been celebrated in most Western countries for hundreds of years; like many Western traditions it has both a religious and secular side. Late winter and spring celebrations, including activities related to marriage and fertility, have been part of many cultures throughout time. Birds and animals choose their mates in the springtime, and with the brightening days and the approach of warmer weather, a general spirit of celebration and renewal seems natural to humans, as well.

In the ancient Roman and Celtic cultures, the season invoked some promiscuous sexual behaviors, especially among the young men and women. The Roman Saturnalia is said to have been accompanied by games in which the men and women would choose sexual partners for the next 12 months, to be changed again the next year. These orgies and activities were supposed to be scheduled as part of the worship of various Roman and other deities, especially those associated with fertility and the home. Cupid or Eros, as the son of the goddess Venus or Aphrodite, is a remnant of that era still remembered today.

The Valentine's Day holiday has become especially associated with the Victorian era. According to tradition, the holiday is named after at least two ancient Roman citizens. One story tells of the Roman Emperor Claudius II who thought that single men made more loyal, willing soldiers, and he forbade all the young men to marry, so that nothing would keep them from joining the army. A priest named Valentine defied the Emperor by performing secret marriage ceremonies for young couples, and was beheaded for his disobedience when he was finally caught. Because of his kindness and self-sacrifice, the local people petitioned to have him declared a saint, the patron saint of lovers.

Another story tells of another priest named Valentine who made friends with everyone he met, especially the local children. The Roman Emperor wanted to be worshipped as the god of the Roman Empire and Valentine was imprisoned because he wouldn’t comply with this order. While in prison, he remained the friend of children, even miraculously healing the jailer’s blind daughter. His young friends from town missed him and wrote love notes to him, tossing them through the window of his jail cell, and he wrote notes back to them, signing them (according to tradition), "from your Valentine". He was also later beheaded, and declared a saint, and the local people remembered his kindness and his miraculous healing of the jailer's daughter.

The date of February 14th became associated with St. Valentine and the older traditions in the year 496 A.D., when it was declared St. Valentine's Day by the Church. Religious activities marked this day, as with all other saints' days. A secular layer was added on February 14, 1415, when Charles, the Duke of Orleans, sent a rhymed love letter to his wife in France, from his cell in the Tower of London, where he was imprisoned after the Battle of Agincourt. Even William Shakespeare mentioned St. Valentine's Day, among Ophelia's lines in Hamlet.

By the Victorian era, the older Valentine's Day traditions associated with fertility and sexuality had been "gentrified" into more child-friendly, romantic, sentimental, and even spiritual activities. Many traditions involved fortune-telling, specifically to help young women find out who they would marry; potions to make him appear in dreams, curious items that represented his initials, and any number of cosmetics to attract him, were all associated with this holiday.
-- Sources: The World Book Encyclopedia, and From Your Valentine: Valentines from the Past, by Roselynn Ederer.