Something About Valentines (and Very Extended Connections)

Heart-shaped boxes, tarts, and more.

Well, love birds, today is Valentines Day. The only candy I detest as much as candy corn are those chalky, colored hearts with those kudzu messages. BM INE. YER SO BAD. OX. DEER HART. Rubbish. The wife likes gerbera daisies, which come in many of the same colors as the chalk-colored hearts, but are inedible, mostly. So that's our holiday.

Did you know there was a real Valentine? Dubbed a saint, no less, and said to be from 3rd Century Rome. He was some sort of priest or bishop who ministered to persecuted Christians but was later martyred and buried on Feb. 14. His name stems from valens (worthy, strong, powerful) and tine, the prong of the fork (I kid).  But it's the name of two other Saints Valentine with a connection to Feb. 14:

• A bishop of Interamna (modern Terni, Italy)
• Someone who suffered with a number of companions in the Roman province of Africa

There are also similarly-named saints not associated with Feb. 14 but you can read up on them elsewhere.  Or at least on another day.  No love for them here, today.

We know these Saints Valentines had hearts but theirs looked nothing like the heart-shaped symbol we know and associate with today's celebrations. Matt Davis of The Big Think notes if these saints had real hearts shaped like the symbol then blood would have a hard time pumping through their bodies:

The reason why the heart symbol looks nothing like the anatomical heart has its roots, oddly enough, in the economy of a Roman city called Cyrene. Cyrene's heart symbol became associated with love through a strange confluence of botany, philosophy, and sex.

And for some reason I'm now reminded of the silly rhyme about the Queen of Hearts making tarts:

The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts,

All on a summer's day;

The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts,

And took them clean away.

The King of Hearts called for the tarts,

And beat the knave full sore;

The Knave of Hearts brought back the tarts,

And vowed he'd steal no more.

Did Childermass make tarts? Of all cards I guess I'm a bit surprised the Queen of Hearts never made it into a Bellairs novel.  Anyway, what I didn't know was there were three more tales (really, stanzas) in this poem about others in the deck, namely the King of Spades, the King of Clubs, and the Diamond King.

Heartbreakers all, I'm sure.