Dear Ann Landers: Feb. 14, 2002, Valentine’s Day, has been declared “Congenital Heart Defect Awareness Day” in cities and states across the U.S. It was started by Jeanne Imperati of North Haven, Conn., to promote funding for support and educational services, scientific research and early detection and screening for the most common birth defect. Approximately 40,000 babies are born each year with congenital heart defects. Sometimes the condition is not detected until adolescence or adulthood.
The Congenital Heart Information Network is a non-profit organization for adult patients, health professionals and parents like me whose children’s complex heart anatomy requires extensive medical procedures and high-risk, open-heart surgeries. Our families will be organizing events, blood drives, educational programs, screening efforts and survival celebrations this February. We hope your readers will join us. For more information, they can contact us at www.tchin.org. — Mona Barmash, Children’s Health Information Network
Dear Mona Barmash: I am happy to help such a worthy cause. It is important on Valentine’s Day to remember that our children’s hearts need to be protected.
Dear Ann Landers: I realize you don’t specialize in cultural history, but I thought you might like to know more about the origins of Valentine’s Day.
St. Valentine’s Day began with a pagan fertility festival, Lupercal, held on Feb. 15. In the year 496, Pope Gelasius created a feast day in memory of St. Valentine, a martyred 3rd Century priest, and placed it on Feb. 14, hoping early Christians would celebrate their romantic traditions a day early and dedicate them to the saint instead of the Roman love goddess Juno. The feast day stuck, but the romantic holiday didn’t.
The romantic holiday finally took hold in medieval England. Geoffrey Chaucer, famous for writing “The Canterbury Tales,” got together with his fellow poets and invented a new holiday to lift the people’s spirits. In a poem titled “The Parliament of Fowls,” Chaucer claimed that all the birds in the world choose their mates on St. Valentine’s Day. Shakespeare refers to Chaucer’s poem in his play “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and gives the name “Valentine” to characters in two other romantic comedies. Ophelia, in “Hamlet,” sings that she wants to “be your Valentine.”
It all started with the two greatest love poets in the English language. — Steven Anderson, adjunct professor, Department of English, Gettysburg College, Pa.
Dear Steven Anderson: Thank you for providing my readers with a fascinating history lesson. Here’s one more:
Dear Ann: The feast of St. Valentine has been associated with romance for nearly 1,000 years. King Henry VIII made Valentine’s Day a national holiday. Love tokens were frequently given on the feast, almost always anonymously. By the 1800s, the so-called “comic” valentines appeared. Sent anonymously, they were a form of social criticism, cruelly pointing out people’s faults.
My information came from Nancy Rosin, the vice president of the National Valentine Collector’s Association. I hope you will find it worth printing. — Tony Hyman, CBS’ “The Saturday Early Show,” author of “Trash or Treasure Guide of Buyers”
Dear Tony Hyman: I do indeed. Please thank Nancy Rosin for her valuable contribution to my column.
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P.S. Happy Valentine’s Day to our veterans in VA hospitals across the country and to our servicemen and women overseas. Bless you all.