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Beginner's Bulletin

Karen Miller

Tomorrow is Saint Valentine s day,
All in the morning bedtime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your Valentine.

William Shakespeare (1564 1616)

Stuck for something to write about? I was when the call for February's copy came out. Last month I started with a hop, skip and a jump with Beginner's Bulletin. This month my attempt wouldn't get off the ground. Like old chewing gum my ideas stuck firmly to the floor and looked just as appealing. That bright, shining light bulb never flickered for one instant above my head. February, what is there to write about February?

Each year on the 14 February we all send cards in the name of Saint Valentine, but who was Saint Valentine? If you try researching this on the Internet yourself you'll probably come up with several different answers. Some believe that two legends arose from the same man while others suggest that there were three different men named Valentine. The most common account I could find was that Valentine was either a Roman Bishop or Priest who was executed in the year A.D. 270 for his Christian beliefs. These beliefs included the marriage ceremony, which the Roman Emperor Claudius II Gothicus was fiercely opposed to as he considered married soldiers to be inferior to single soldiers. Some say that while imprisoned Valentine sent many messages to his friends asking them all to Remember Valentine. Another romantic account claims that he fell in love with his jailer's daughter and signed his last letter to her yours Valentine. What is agreed is that the execution fell on the 14th February the day before, Lupercalia, the Roman feast of fertility. Over the years the two dates have entwined to become the Christian festival for love.

The practice of sending each other cards evolved much later when Esther A. Howland invented the Valentine card in the 1840s. And while we're discussing Valentine cards: why do we use an X to symbolize a kiss? Again there are many theories on the subject. One being that during Medieval times it was common practice for those who could not write their names to sign documents with an X in the presence of a witness. A kiss was then exchanged with the witness as a sign of sincerity. Over the years the X became the symbol of the kiss.

I'll let you be the judge of how extensively I did or didn't cover each question, but you have to agree I've made a start at putting those previously elusive words down on paper?

Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November,
February has twenty-eight alone,
All the rest have thirty-one;
Excepting leap year, that 's the time
When February's days are twenty-nine.

The Return from Parnassus. (London, 1606.)