Blue Violets

The only thing more art-inspiring and enduring than love is it’s opposite, hate. Millions of songs are composed lauding the romance and devotion of lovers over the ages, but close on the heels of dedicated bliss are poems and songs of hate, betrayal and despair.

Even the much-disputed origin of Valentines Day as a holiday is a complicated, interwoven tale of love and hate, torment and romance that has spun it’s way dizzily through the ages causing angst and turmoil in event the most devout of hearts.

Valentine was a saint in 5th century Rome who was martyred in 496 AD for his faith. He was buried on the 14th of February and the anniversary of his death was observed by the Catholic Church after his canonization. According to legend, Saint Valentine wore a ring made of amethyst, embedded with the image of cupid. He presided at the illegal weddings of Roman Soldiers who were forbidden to marry, as the Emperor Claudius II believed that married men did not make good soldiers. It was said that soldiers would know him by his cupid ring and request the performance of his secret nuptials. The amethyst later became the birthstone for the month of February, and is said to bring love. Valentine, so the story goes, would cut hearts out of parchment and give them to the soldiers that he ministered to, beginning the tradition of heart-shaped love notes.

Valentine was caught and imprisoned for his romantic ministry, and while incarcerated, he is said to have healed his jailer’s daughter, Julia, from blindness. A letter sent from his cell to the girl was signed “from your Valentine” was perhaps the first Valentine ever sent.

The Catholic Church removed St. Valentine’s day from the General Roman Calendar in 1969, but the holiday had grown rooted in tradition across the globe by that time. Speculation has tied the holiday to the ancient Roman feast of Lupercalia, a three day celebration of fertility in mid February, but there has been no traceable connection to this observance and a later resurgence of the romantic association appointed to February 14th by poets and lovers was far removed from Rome’s pagan roots.

Geoffrey Chaucer, the English poet, penned the verse: For this was on seynt Volantynys day, Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make. ["For this was on St. Valentine's Day, when every bird cometh there to choose his mate."] nearly a thousand years after Saint Valentine’s death. Later, scholars would argue that the Valentine he referred to was not Valentine of Rome, but the feast of St. Valentine of Genoa, who died nearly 100 years before Valentine of Rome, which was observed in early May, a time more likely for the mating of birds in Britain.

Whatever the reference actually meant, Valentine’s Day was firmly established in society as a celebration of romance on February 14th by the beginning of the 15th century. Following Chaucer’s lead, French and English poets latched on to the theme and over the next two centuries, references to Valentines Day, featuring birds and romantic love surged across Europe, triggering anxiety in romantically unstable humans everywhere.

Next to Valentine’s message to Julia from jail, the oldest surviving Valentine card came from Charles, Duke of Orleans, referring to his wife as his “very sweet Valentine” while he was also imprisoned (is there a theme here?) in the Tower of London in the 1400s: Je suis desja d'amour tanné, Ma tres doulce Valentinée… Even Shakespeare gave the holiday a nod in Hamlet in the early 1600s, because mental illness and love are ever intertwined.

Mass production of romantic cards, love notes and poetry was well underway in England by the end of the 18th century, and in 1847, the first commercially produced Valentines were available in the United States. And thus, the wheels of history were set in motion to the chagrin of uninspired partners everywhere.

Valentines’ past is fraught with drama and intrigue, martyrs and inmates, lovesick and insane. In recent years, with the decline of Victorian era chivalrous and romantic ideals, a pushback against the machine of Valentines Day has emerged, and with it a steadily growing resistance to the expectation that the holiday fosters. Love, without doubt, has caused as much agony as euphoria, and the rejection of romance is as relatable as the first rush of infatuation for almost every human.

Love songs abound and rub our collective faces in the bliss of a hot crush, but songs about hate, rejection and romantic despair are often tucked away out of sight from polite society. Today, we present you with the Anti-Valentine’s Day Playlist. All of the songs you need to get you through a season of constant, agonizing reminders that you are alone. Happy Anti-Valentines Day, all you haters.

The rose is red, the violet's blue,

The honey's sweet, and so are you.

Thou are my love and I am thine;

I drew thee to my Valentine:

The lot was cast and then I drew,

And Fortune said it shou'd be you.