Loving Traditions

Many years ago on Valentine’s Day, I found a huuuuge stuffed bear with an exposed red heart on our porch.  This adorable bear, beloved symbol for lovers everywhere[i], sent me into a flurry of delighted speculation. I wondered who the perfect prince of romance could be. I swooned, I dreamed, and got lost in the romance of it all. Come on, it was romantic! Who can deny the romance of a stuffed synthetic fanged animal with an exposed heart left by a stranger at your home?  Weeell, as I would eventually learn, the prince was the queen and not a stranger and the bear was regifted to me and in reality, the bear really was much smaller than my memory demands. A schoolchild on Valentine’s Day had given the bear to my mother, his teacher and she had decided to pass his innocent token of love on to me, but repackaged to fit in with the romantic traditions of Valentine’s Day.

The 14^th of February has accumulated many traditions even though it is mostly invented. Almost everyone knows[ii] that the contemporary celebration of love has a very loose historical relationship to the events that gave birth to it.  For the single on this particular day of the year we recognize that certain objects represent a token of love from an admirer who may or may not want a romantic relationship.  In the centuries of its existence the traditions and tokens of love have changed and yet a young woman meeting a bear on the porch instantly was transported to the very heart of the tradition.  The tradition of celebrating love and romantic affection as we know it today would not have been the same for me without amongst other things, the invention of romantic love, the invention of the printing press[iii], colonialism bringing us all kinds of weird traditions and on and on and on.

Perhaps someone could tell me why stuffed bears, dogs and various animals indicate romantic interest. How it is that chubby little naked boys coming at you with an arrow should gladden the heart they are aiming for? How has this wealth of symbolism come to be associated with martyred saints? We do know Cupid/ Eros/possible Biblical cherubim got a supporting role in the mysterious Valentine’s Day.  The origins of this day are shrouded in mystery, though legends as with all good traditions, abound. Wikipedia tells us there were two, possibly three martyred St Valentines connected to the day and the celebration of one or other of these saints was established in 486 A.D. Valentine 1, 2 or 3 suffered for love, was heroic or was a cover to merge Roman paganism with Catholicism. Honestly we don’t really care about the horrifically killed saints or Catholicism’s fight for believers and the sneaky stubbornness of Roman traditions. We just want to be part of what the tradition has come to represent: love, belonging, desire, excitement.

I remember the excitement of Valentine’s Day as a young schoolgirl wondering breathlessly as the cards made their rounds to our classrooms if there would be one for me. I learnt at school and in the stores along with my schoolmates what the symbolisms of love are. Representing romance with recognisable symbols of intimacy,desire and love is taken very seriously in many parts of South Africa. Schools have programmes on the day where romantic sentimentality is celebrated and young men and women, like me are trained in the art of giving and receiving red, white and pink cards with arrow shooting cherubs and various domesticated beasts on them. Flowers, roses are super romantic. We were expected to wear the colors of love, white and red clothing and listen and perform sappy songs about longing, desire and the fulfillments of love and all those other stuff. We got excited thinking about being adults exchanging roses and candy and having the super sophisticated dinners and exchanging the perfect expensive gifts. And come on, who am I kidding? Even as adults we feel a little frisson on Valentine’s Day, even if we grumble, even if we know it’s not a real historical tradition, even if we deride the sentimentality, the tradition has a hold on us and to satisfy its demands, well you know. Candy, dinner, flowers, cards, gifts and ….
 
After all, it is a tradition you are invariably part of, if only through exposure ...

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[i] Yes, we know that this may not be true for every person on the planet. But if you felt a little jolt at the adorableness of the bear or revolted by the commodification of love or appalled by the gross sentimentality then it certainly does apply to you.

[ii] Read the footnote above!

[iii] Hallmark remains grateful and so does Mills and Boon.