Blonde's eye view

By Tom Derbyshire on February 7, 2008 3:59 PM |

Tagged with:

Well, it’s about this time of year that I start contemplating ripping out St Valentine’s pink satin heart and sticking it on a skewer.

I’m not a fan of Valentine’s Day, in case you were wondering, and not just because I’ve driven away everyone that has ever loved me. No, I hate it for a lot more reasons than that.

Mostly because it is a made-up festival that means couples have to buy each other cards whether they want to or not. Now, call me cynical, but I fail to see what is romantic about that.

So this week I headed to the internet to find out more about St Valentine, to find out how he became the patron saint of card shops. It turns out St Valentine was martyred in the third century for refusing to renounce Christ.

Apparently he was such a nice bloke that he miraculously restored the sight of his jailer’s blind daughter, just before having his head cut off. What a legend!

Which is interesting, because I think I would rather behead someone on Valentine’s Day than receive a pink gorilla clutching a heart on a keyring. But I digress.

Well, this all begs the question: how did we come to associate February 14 with romantic love and not gruesome beheadings? Well, you might know whose fault that was. Geoffrey flipping Chaucer. A man whose mother should have hit his little hands with a mallet every time he reached for a quill. However, quite how this transformation took place, Wikipedia doesn’t tell.

Whatever you do on February 14, whether you send a card to your loved one, or behead some pious bloke from 260 AD, just remember, it is probably precisely this kind of vitriol that is the reason I have never received a Valentine’s card.