Monday 14 February 2011

Valentines Day

Happy Valentines Day

Don’t we all just love this special day?  Well probably not if we are completely honest with ourselves.  I can remember back to my early school days when the thought of not getting any cards was so horrifying that I used to send one to myself – just in case.  More often than not I was glad that I had.  Now that we are a bit older, married for what seems like forever and two small children running around – celebrating Valentines Day seems like a distant memory.  As with the tooth fairy saga, I decided to look up the origins of Valentines Day so that I could explain it to Sean (4yrs old).  To be honest it was all a bit boring and I doubt it would have held his attention much.  The only relevant piece of information that I could find was this –

Valentine's Day started in the time of the Roman Empire. In ancient Rome, February 14th was a holiday to honour Juno. Juno was the Queen of the Roman Gods and Goddesses. The Romans also knew her as the Goddess of women and marriage. The following day, February 15th, began the Feast of Lupercalia.
The lives of young boys and girls were strictly separate. However, one of the customs of the young people was name drawing. On the eve of the festival of Lupercalia the names of Roman girls were written on slips of paper and placed into jars. Each young man would draw a girl's name from the jar and would then be partners for the duration of the festival with the girl whom he chose. Sometimes the pairing of the children lasted an entire year, and often, they would fall in love and would later marry.

Although Sean is only four he has decided on the young lady that he would like to marry.  When I explained to him that it was customary to ask the father for his daughters’ hand in marriage his first response was “well why not the Mum as well?”  It was a fair question and the next time we saw the parents he did indeed ask both the mother and father if you could marry their daughter.  They very kindly said yes not really knowing just what a determined little boy he is.  Watch this space over the next 20 years!!  My role as mother to this very determined little boy is of course to save him from having his heart broken.  How to do this – well make the future wife a little valentine gift and have it delivered to the door from a ‘secret admirer’.  What little girl wouldn’t love that?



My Valentine gift to my family was to make some shortbread heart biscuits – can’t get more romantic than that (see Monday Mood Food).


Lastly, a little something for my hubby xoxoxo

I laugh, I love, I hope, I try, I hurt, I need, I fear, I cry.
And I know you do the same things too,
So we're really not that different,
me and you.

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