VD
Why are you being hustled by street vendors to buy sad and drooping former roses, vegetative matter that missed the cut for bouquets, or were too late to the hospital?
Blame Esther A. Howland (1828 – 1904) of Worcester, Massachusetts. Her guilt is writ large by the Greeting Card Association’s Esther Howland Award for a Greeting Card Visionary. She imported the concept to the US from Britain to bolster her father’s stationery store in 1847.
Of course, it wasn’t long before the stationers had infiltrated school boards and imposed the now mandatory exchange in the classroom to push the low end product of Asian children and prisoners.
Seeing the success of the card merchants, the confectioners jumped on board to fill the lull between Christmas and Easter with the benefit that the bulk of purchases would be made by desperate men with less sense of taste than a golden retriever. If the box was red, heart-shaped, and said chocolate, a man would buy it.
There were at least three Saint Valentines and all were martyrs, as they should have been for the trouble they’ve caused. None are the reason for the “holiday”, only the excuse. They lived at a time when life and men were short and brutal, so the romantic aura of the holiday is pure piffle. At least one was reportedly part of a draft dodging scheme during the Roman Empire, marrying people so that men with “other priorities” could avoid being deployed to foreign wars, bachelors being preferred for catapult fodder.
It is to be hoped that the individual who first wrote: “Roses are red, violets are blue” was eaten by rabid wolverines, or had hemorrhoids.
8 comments
I worked on an E-prime version for Wikipedia:
Roses look red
Violets look blue
Honey seems sweet
And so do you.
Some people keep suggesting that honey tastes sweet, and that may be the better wording, depending on who you are delivering the poem to.
To have a specific day on which to declare love is stupid and trivializes it. It is something for the schools to do and decorate for, but it truly is something to grow out of.
That said, saying ‘I love you’ to someone is truly important to a relationship, so if it is said only once a year, it’s better than nothing. (And if it is being said only once a year, don’t give fucking chocolate. You’d better make it diamonds, you twit!)
(Never ever try to go out to eat on Valentine’s Day!)
Actually, humans who converse in the language normally referenced as English have agreed to label the light wavelengths reflected from the blossoms of some the vegetation they have agreed to call a rose to be red.
Words only have meaning when that meaning is accepted.
I have always been bothered by “violets are blue” as the violets with which I’m most familiar are, in fact, violet and not blue. Cornflowers do tend to be blue, although some stray into purple, but my grandmother’s violets, were violet.
Honey definitely fires the neurons attached to those taste buds that are recognized as be associated with the taste range that we agree to call “sweet”.
Ellroon, if we didn’t have specific days set aside for specific purposes how could we possibly organize a sales calendar. Stores would be forced to stock warn clothes when it was cold, as opposed to carry lightweight Spring clothes when the temperature in the twenties. People have to be told when certain things are appropriate, although I understand that many schools have banned the exchange of Valentines because it causes problems for the self-esteem of children who don’t receive any.
Heh. When I was a kid they “solved” the esteem problem by requiring that anyone who brought cards had to provide one for each classmate. It was a real test of skill to figure out which card was the most lame-ass for the folks on the ick-list.
“(Never ever try to go out to eat on Valentine’s Day!)” – ellroon
… unless you have a reservation. Chalk one up for me; I thought of it a few weeks ago.
“… depending on who you are delivering the poem to.” – Michael
Michael, your spouse or um-friend is a very lucky person! 😈
Bryan, your post subject reminds me of a longtime friend well known to YDD readers, whose initials used to be VD. Not only did she wish people a Happy VD; she also concluded memos at work, “To contact VD, please call…” But she changed her legal name so that those two initials are now VC. Fortunately, there’s no need for you to engage in combat with her.
However you choose to celebrate it (or not), have a good one!
You actually looked at them, Scorpio? If I couldn’t get my Mother to do it, I did it in order from a class roster. I’m not a fan of guilt trips designed as fake commercial holidays.
Steve, between the military and law enforcement, I didn’t get holidays off, so I gave up on worrying about them. Flying around the world, some days had forty hours, others had four depending on where you took off, where you landed and which way you flew.
You worked based on Z/GMT/UT dates and times, and local time was for those outside the “job”. If you don’t connect to the local flow, you don’t worry about it. That probably seems strange, but so would a 4-1/4-1/4-4 rotating work schedule which was four 12-8AM shifts, 24 hours off, four 8-4PM shifts, 24 hours off, and four 4-Midnight shifts followed by 96 hours off. The concept of “work weeks” doesn’t exist, and the meaning of days of the week is lost.
A friend sent a note saying, “Happy VD”. I sent a note asking if that’s like saying, “Happy STD”?
Isn’t that the day we turn the clocks back in the Fall?