Five curiosities you don’t know about Valentine’s Day.

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner and, to avoid being caught off guard and organize a romantic evening for the person of our heart, legend, history and traditions of a thousand-year-old celebration, now widespread throughout the world, come to our aid. If you are in the mood for romance, here is a taste of what awaits you: five curiosities about Valentine’s Day that you probably didn’t know, for a perfect evening.

1. Pagan origins: the feast of love.

The celebration of Saint Valentine owes its birth to Lupercalia, a pagan festival of ancient Rome linked to fertility dedicated to the god Lupercus, a faun who hunted nymphs. Born as a “celebration of the awakening of nature after winter”, this is where the aphrodisiac origins of this celebration come from. Abolished by Pope Gelasius, the celebration of love was replaced by the more classic and better accepted celebration of lovers, which many Christians also gradually joined.

2. Love notes, since the Middle Ages.

Another fundamental stage in the history of Valentine’s Day has its roots in the Middle Ages. Born as a ceremony for high-ranking men and women, it gave rise to a real ritual where everyone was required to draw a note, which reported the name of the person who would have to dance with him. Hence the famous notes in chocolates or the expression “To wear your heart on your sleeve” (show your feelings), whose meaning is linked to the feelings of a person in love, so clear and obvious that they have already been guessed by everyone else.

3. The exchange of chocolates, the ritual from the Land of the Rising Sun.

Chocolate and love go hand in hand. Valentine’s Day is a celebration that every civilization has transformed into a real anniversary, through its own customs and habits, but also rituals and traditions. In Japan, Valentine’s Day is a true chocolate celebration: the millenary tradition wants the “exchange of chocolates” to be symbolic for couples who swear their love. Women are the first to give chocolates – strictly handmade – to their partner who will have to reciprocate with the same gesture a month later, on the day dedicated to White Day, March 14, offering them a gift of white chocolate.

4. A classic but not too much: the call of the wedding in the “Land of Love”.

With flowers, romance and chocolates as a custom, Valentine’s Day in the Philippines is the best date to get married. A tradition so consolidated that the government itself sponsors a mass celebration with thousands of couples saying “I do”. So many choose that date that, to please everyone, the wedding is celebrated in public places such as shopping malls and theaters. And so the Philippines earns the name of the Country of Love.

5. Wine, at the heart of a romantic evening.

A curious tradition is that in Bulgaria they do not celebrate Valentine’s Day, but St. Trifon Zarezan, or the celebration of wine, a testimony of how Bacchus is profoundly central to love. Couples in love toast their union with a good glass of wine each. A lucky gesture to renew their promises of love. A passionate red, a sweet and sparkling white or a tantalizing and sugary rosé, therefore cannot be missing from the center of your table.

Source: Editorial Staff | kenwoodclub.it

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