World News | From Chaucer to Chocolate: How Valentine’s Day Gifts Have Changed Through the Centuries

Melbourne, February 13 (The Conversation) On Valentine’s Day, some couples just rolled their eyes sarcastically at each other. In the modern world, the capitalization of love certainly looks banal.

But Valentine’s Day gifts are hardly a contemporary invention. People have been celebrating this day and giving tokens of love for hundreds of years.

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We should first turn to Geoffrey Chaucer, 14th-century poet, civil servant and astute European traveler. Chaucer’s 1380s poem “The Parliament of the Birds” is believed to be the first to use February 14 as a day of love.

This day was already a festival of several mysterious early Roman martyrs St. Valentine, but Chaucer described it as the day when people choose their lovers. He knew that was easier said than done.

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The poem’s narrator has failed in love, despairing that life is short compared to the time it takes to learn to love well. He fell asleep and dreamed of a garden in which all the different birds of the world gathered.

Nature explained to the assembled flock that, like every year on St. Valentine’s Day, they would choose their mates according to her rules. But the process caused confusion and debate: the birds couldn’t agree on what it meant to follow her rules, because they all valued different things in their partners.

Legal and Emotional Significance

In Chaucer’s day, as today, gift-giving could be highly ritualized, symbolizing intent and commitment. In Old and Middle English, “wedding” was a symbol of any kind of guaranteed promise. “Wedding” did not begin to mean a wedding ceremony until the 13th century.

During the same period, marriage was transformed into a Christianized unbreakable commitment (a sacrament of the Church). New love customs developed in songs, stories, and other types of art.

These customs influenced broader cultural notions of affection: writing love letters, celebrating great acts of service, and giving tokens of love.

Rings, brooches, girdles (belts), gloves, mittens (sleeves), turbans or other personalized textiles, combs, mirrors, purses, boxes, utensils, and pictures—even fish—are just some examples of romantic gifts in the middle and late ages.

In stories, gifts can be magical. In World History in the 13th century, Rudolf von Ems recorded how Moses made a two rings.

The one he gave her would make Tarbes forget about him. He always wears those pairs and keeps her memory forever fresh in his mind.

Beyond the story, gifts can have legal significance: wedding rings, important since the 13th century, can prove that a marriage has taken place by proving the intent and consent of the giver and receiver.

art of love

Like Chaucer, 20th-century German psychologist Erich Fromm believed that people could learn the art of loving. Fromm believed that love is not only the act of giving material things, but also the act of giving one’s happiness, interest, understanding, knowledge, humor and sorrow.

While these gifts may take some time and practice, there are more immediate ideas in history. Cardwork has dominated since the Industrial Revolution, alongside other traditional gifts such as flowers, jewellery, intimate apparel and consumables (now more chocolate than fish). All can be personalized for that intimate encounter.

Of course, there are even stranger examples of love gifts, like Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton exchanging necklaces and silver pendants, all stained with each other’s blood.

When her notoriously mean lover Pablo Picasso complained about having to trade a painting for a ruby ​​ring, the artist Dora Maar was so upset that she promptly threw the ring into the Seine. Picasso quickly replaced it with another, this one featuring a portrait of Maar.

A good love token can outlast the affection that prompted it to give: a flower pressed into a book, a charm at the bottom of a box, a faded heartfelt card or a bittersweet song that takes you back in time song. In this way, the meaning of gifts can change as they serve as a reminder that all things pass. (dialogue)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)