In response to a request from a coalition of the Georgetown Chapter of Dads United and the Williamson County Council of Grumpy Old Men, the Bookworm has gathered the following information on the observance of Father’s Day and famous fathers in fact and fiction.
Over the centuries and around the world many societies have celebrated parenthood or honored parents. In the United States the third Sunday in June has been set aside to honor fathers and fatherhood. As was the case with Mother’s Day, there were two women who figured prominently in the establishment of Father’s Day.
Mrs. Grace Golden Clayton, a member of the congregation of the Williams Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church South (Central United Methodist) in Fairmont, West Virginia, persuaded her pastor that there should be a day to remember and honor fathers. Mrs. Clayton was motivated by her empathy for the children left fatherless by the Monongah mining disaster of December 1907. Explosions in the No. 6 and No. 8 mines had killed 362 men and boys and left over 1,000 children without fathers. On the 5th of July 1908, the congregation of Central United Methodist held the first Father’s Day service.
The other woman who campaigned for Father’s Day was Mrs. Sonora Smart Dodd from the state of Washington. Her father, William Jackson Smart, had raised six children as a single parent following the death of his wife. Mrs. Dodd found her inspiration in Anna Jarvis’s efforts to establish Mother’s Day and went to work organizing the community of Spokane. Her efforts bore fruit and on 19 June 1910, the first June celebration of Father’s Day took place in Spokane, WA.
Father’s Day observances became quite popular and by 1924, President Calvin Coolidge recommended that Father’s Day be observed nationally. Fifty-two years later, President Richard Nixon made it an official observance.
In the research process, I came across some other tidbits about Father’s Day. First, I am sure it will come as no surprise to most of you (fathers in particular) that the most common Father’s Day gift is the necktie. Did you know, though, that the official flower for Father’s Day is the rose? You wear a white one if your father is deceased; a red one if your father is still living.

Now in honor of the approximately 64.3 million fathers in the nation, here’s my little Father’s Day quiz.

All of the following have some connection to one of the many nicknames for father. Can you place them?

(1) Gene Autry

(2) Glenn Scobey Warner

(3) Colonel Gregory Boyington

(4) Frank Epperson

(5) Ben Cartwright

(6) Stephen Fuller Austin

(7) Jim Anderson

(8) John Schnatter

(9) Wilbert Lee O’Daniel

(10) Heathcliff “Cliff” Huxtable

(11) Louis Armstrong

(12) Wilver Dornell “Willie” Stargell

Answers:
(1) That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine was the title of a song written in 1932 by Gene Autry and Jimmy Long. It was Gene Autry’s first recording and would later be recorded by Simon and Garfunkel, Jim Reeves, and the Everly Brothers, among others.

(2) Glenn Scobey Warner earned his nickname “Pop” for being the oldest player on his college football team. The national program, Pop Warner Little Scholars, Inc., created in 1959, was named in his honor.

(3) Colonel Gregory “Pappy” Boyington, USMC, was an American fighter ace and Medal of Honor recipient. He led the American Volunteer Group’s Flying Tigers in the Republic of China Air Force during the Second Sino-Japanese War. He later commanded the famous U.S. Marine Corps squadron, known as the Black Sheep, during World War II.

(4) Frank Epperson invented the Popsicle. Actually he called it the “Eppsicle” ice pop, but his children insisted on referring to it as the “Popsicle” so eventually he officially changed the name.

(5) Ben Cartwright was the father of the Cartwright family in the long-running Bonanza television saga. The part of Pa Cartwright was played by Lorne Greene.

(6) Stephen Fuller Austin, of course is known as the “Father of Texas” in recognition of his leadership in the successful colonization of the region.

(7) Jim Anderson was the role played by the actor Robert Young on the 1950s and 1960s radio and television sitcom Father Knows Best.

(8) John Schnatter founded Papa John’s Pizza.

(9) Wilbert Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel was a radio personality and Democratic Party politician from Texas. In 1941, O’Daniel ran for the United States Senate in a special election and defeated Lyndon Johnson. His victory made him the only person to ever defeat Johnson for elected office. The role of the Mississippi governor in the movie, O Brother, Where Art Thou, is loosely based on W.L. O’Daniel.

(10) Heathcliff “Cliff” Huxtable was the name of the dad, played by Bill Cosby, in the family sitcom The Cosby Show.

(11) Louis Armstrong was the world-renowned American jazz trumpeter and singer. He was known by two nicknames “Satchmo” and “Pops”.

(12) Wilver Dornell “Willie” Stargell, a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, played outfield and first base for the Pittsburgh Pirates for twenty years. In the latter years of his career he was nicknamed “Pops”. He holds the record for the longest home run (506 feet, 6½ inches) hit at Dodger Stadium.

I endlessly hear on TV the words HOT and COOL to describe opinions on persons, products, movies, automobiles, etc. It seems to me that these words which describe extremes have definitions known only to young people. Would you explain their meanings? — A senior citizen.
According to the Dictionary of American Regional English, both hot and cool have been used as slang expressions since the mid-nineteenth century. In general, they are used to express admiration or approval.
As a slang expression the word cool describes that which is very good or pleasing. It is often used to describe someone or something that is sophisticated or more relaxed and self-assured. Jazz musicians adopted the term for a jazz style that was more intellectual than the earlier forms of jazz which tended to be more emotional.
The word hot comes from the German word heiss for hot and the Goth word heito for fever. Hot is frequently used to characterize that which is sexually attractive or exciting. Examples of this usage are the expressions hot mama and hot babe both of which have been used to describe a sexy woman.
In the jazz world, hot jazz is the term commonly used to refer to music that is highly emotional or playing that is characterized by exciting rhythmic and tonal effects and an insistent, driving beat.
The Oxford English Dictionary includes in its definitions of hot that which is fresh or recent, much as something that is “hot from the oven” is something that is fresh.

What does the expression “lickety split” mean? – HM
Lickety split is a colloquial adverbial expression meaning “at full speed” or “headlong”. During the early nineteenth century the word lick was introduced as a synonym for “a spurt at racing”. In 1859 the Bartlett Dictionary of Americanisms included an entry for the term lickety which it defined as “very fast, headlong; ‘He went lickety split down hill’”.

When did we start using contractions? – C.J.

Contractions have been around for a long, long time. As an example, in the early development of Latin, to express the negative of the verb volo which means “I want”, one could use non volo, but over time that phrase would be replaced by a contraction of the two words in the form of the word nolo (I do not want).

The fact is that contractions can be found in most languages, ancient and modern, eastern and western. Usually they have come about as the result of elision in everyday speech. In other words, there is an almost universal tendency for speakers to slur or omit vowels, consonants, or syllables, particularly when speaking rapidly.

That said, a grammarian will tell you that in the English language the use of contractions should be reserved for informal communication whether spoken or written. For formal writing or speech one should not contract words. To drive home that point, William Safire in his book How Not to Write (428 SAFI) entitled a chapter “Don’t use contractions in formal writing”.

Not all writers abide by this rule, however. Some very successful writers have used contracted words in their works. The writer George Bernard Shaw (always a rebel) not only used contractions, he also defied convention by using contracted words without apostrophes, as in didnt and wouldnt.

And just so you know, according to The Oxford Companion to the English Language (R 420.3 OXFO) there are five major types of contractions. They are: (1) Auxiliary, such as he’ll for he will. (2) Negative, as in isn’t for is not. (3) Contraction of the pronoun us, as in let’s. (4) Elisions such as c’mon for come on. and (5) Shortened forms of words used in note-taking such as dept for department.

Isn’t Mother’s Day just another “Hallmark holiday”? – Name withheld
While it is true that retailers have exploited Mother’s Day, unlike some other celebrations that are heavily promoted, Mother’s Day is not the creation of Wall Street. Since ancient times there have been holidays to celebrate the ideals of motherhood. Roman mothers received gifts on the festival of Matronalia. Later, the early Christians developed the tradition of honoring Mary in the month of May.
In the U.S., Mother’s Day is celebrated on the second Sunday in May. The first official national Mother’s Day was declared in 1914 by President Woodrow Wilson as a day for Americans to honor those mothers whose sons had died in war. Wilson’s declaration came about largely due to the efforts of two women, Julia Ward Howe and Anna Jarvis.
Julia Ward Howe had witnessed the brutality of war during the War Between the States and the Franco-Prussian War. In 1870, she authored a call for peace and disarmament called the Mother’s Day Proclamation. Howe failed in her attempts to get formal recognition of a Mother’s Day for Peace. Her efforts to gain recognition for the sacrifices made by mothers would not bear fruit until after her death.
Around the same time that Howe was trying to unit women against war, a young Appalachian homemaker named Ann Jarvis was also working for peace by trying to reconcile her Union and Confederate neighbors. Following Ann Jarvis’ death in 1907, her daughter, Anna Jarvis, started a crusade to establish a memorial day for women. The first such Mother’s Day was celebrated in 1908 in the church where Ann Jarvis had taught Sunday school. The custom caught on and spread to 45 states and by 1912 some states had declared Mother’s Day an official holiday.
Nine years after the first official Mother’s Day, commercialization of the U.S. holiday became so rampant that Anna Jarvis herself became a major opponent of what the holiday had become. She would spend the rest of her life campaigning against what she saw as the exploitation of Mother’s Day by commercial interests. She denounced confectioners, florists and other groups whom she accused of gouging the public. She recommended the wearing of a carnation, her mother’s favorite flower, on Mother’s Day, but when the price of carnations went up, she adopted a celluloid button as the official emblem. She paid for the manufacture of those buttons which she then gave away to others.
Despite Anna’s efforts, Mother’s Day continues to be one of the most commercially successful U.S. occasions. According to the National Retail Federation’s 2008 Mother’s Day Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, consumers will spend an average of $138.63 this year.
In spite of all the commercialization, the idea of honoring mothers does get through. I know this because when I asked my young grandson what Mother’s Day was about – he answered – “It’s the day you tell your mother you love her”.

Now, just for fun, see if you can identify these mothers and grandmothers:

(1) Ma Ferguson,

(2) Mother Cabrini

(3) Mother Jones

(4) Mother Goose

(5) “the Artist’s Mother”

(6) Grandma Moses

(7) Moms Mabley

(8) Mother Hale

(9) Mama Cass

(10) Mammy Yoakum

(11) the Mother of Texas

(12) the Mother of the Civil Rights Movement

Answers:
(1) Miriam Amanda Wallace Ferguson, AKA Ma Ferguson, was the first woman governor of Texas.

(2) Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini known during her life as Mother Cabrini was the first American citizen to be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church.

(3) Mary Harris “Mother” Jones was a prominent American labor and community organizer. The magazine Mother Jones is dedicated to her memory.

(4) Mother Goose is a well-known character in fairy tales and nursery rhymes. It has never been determined whether or not she was a real person.

(5) Anna McNeill Whistler was the subject of the 1871 painting entitled Arrangement in Grey and Black: the Artist’s Mother, more commonly known as Whistler’s Mother. In 1934 the U.S. Post Office issued a stamp engraved with an image of Whistler’s Mother with the slogan “In Memory and In Honor of the Mothers of America.”

(6) Anna Mary Robertson Moses, better known as the folk artist “Grandma Moses”, began her career as an artist at the age of 76. She took up painting because arthritis had crippled her hands so that she could no longer embroider. In 1961, she passed away at the age 101.

(7) Jackie “Moms” Mabley began life as Loretta Mary Aiken in 1894. She was one of the most successful entertainers of the black vaudeville stage. With the passing of vaudeville, she became a successful comedienne on stage and screen. She passed away in 1975.

(8) Clara McBride “Mother” Hale founded Hale House, a home for unwanted children.

(9) Cass Elliot, born Ellen Naomi Cohen, was a noted American singer; best remembered as Mama Cass of the pop quartet The Mamas & the Papas.

(10) Mammy Yokum was the matriarch of the Yokum clan of Al Capp’s Li’l Abner comic strip. She smoked a corncob pipe and packed a lethal right undercut, known as the “good night Irene punch” which she sometimes used to uphold law, order and decency.

(11) Jane Wilkinson Long is considered the Mother of Texas.

(12) Rosa Parks is known as the “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement”.

What is the longest novel in any language? – George Art

Well, like a lot of things in life, there is no one answer to that question. First, there is the difficulty in determining what to count. If we count words, what constitutes a word? Word counts can vary widely depending on which script or alphabet system is used. For instance, in Chinese one character can represent a word.

If we consider only those languages that use the Roman or Cyrillic alphabet, there are still some difficulties involved in making accurate comparisons. Should only works that are contained in one volume be considered? Should novel cycles be considered? Some of the novels that have the highest counts are “roman fleuves”. The term is French for “river-novel”. It refers to a work, often in several volumes, that describes the history of several generations of a family, community, or other group and often portrays an overall view of society during a particular time. Such works are sometimes referred to as saga novels.

Even when the volume issue is resolved, there are still several other questions remaining. Among them, whether or not unpublished works qualify. Does it matter whether or not a work is of consequence? Should works that employ “gimmicks” be included?

For those lists that rank works using the Roman or Cyrillic alphabets placement is determined by the total number of characters. Guinness World Records credits Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, sometimes titled In Search of Lost Time, as the longest novel ever written at 9,609,000 characters (including spaces) and more than thirty-three hundred pages. This multivolume novel is the cornerstone on which Proust’s reputation as the greatest French novelist of the twentieth century rests. What is the book about? Proust biographer George Painter, summarizes it best; stating, “Proust’s masterpiece transcends the novel genre and is more accurately an elaborate memoir”. Remembrance of Things Past, according to Painter, was intended by Proust as “the symbolic story of his life”

Some consider the longest novel in English originally published in book form to be Sironia, Texas by Madison Alexander Cooper, Jr., a grocery store owner and philanthropist from Waco, Texas. He worked on this novel for eleven years as a hobby.

Houghton Mifflin published Sironia, Texas in 1952. The two-volume novel was 1,731 pages long. It describes life in a small Texas town from 1900 to 1921 and combines an impressive array of naturalistic social detail with the conventions of Victorian novels. The book involves eighty-three characters in twenty-one separate plot lines and traces the conflict between the town’s decaying Southern aristocracy and its rising merchant class. Cooper’s book, however, is not well-known. Most researchers have either overlooked it or ignored it when compiling their lists.

On listings that do not consider language, the number two position is sometimes awarded to The Man Without Qualities by the Austrian novelist and essayist Robert Musil. This novel comes in at 1700 pages in three volumes.
The main issue of this “story of ideas”, which takes place in the twilight of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, is the need to preserve order in a shaken world (never considering the fact that World War I was to begin in a couple of months).
The title in German is Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften which is a pun on the phrase Mann mit Eigenschaften—literally “man with qualities”—equivalent to the English-language phrase “self-made man.
The longest roman fleuve ever written is Jules Romains’s Les Hommes de bonne volonté (Men of Good Will), produced in 27 volumes, each with a separate title, and published from 1932-46. If taken as a single piece of fiction, it would be a strong contender for the longest novel ever written.
Until recently, an argument could also be made for awarding the title to L. Ron Hubbard’s Mission Earth series. Although published in ten volumes, the original manuscript was intended to be one novel. The word count as originally written was 1.2 million words.
There is however, a new contender. Marienbad My Love by Mark Leach is a love story about the end of the world. With the publication of this 2.5-million-word work the author claims the title of the world’s longest self-published novel in English. It was published in a single volume in 2008.

If unpublished works are taken into account then The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion by Henry Darger is certainly a strong contender. This illustrated fantasy novel consists of a typed single-spaced manuscript totaling 15,145 pages in 10 volumes, by some estimates this would be approximately nine million words. Discovered after Darger’s death, the manuscript has never been published but has inspired artist and musicians.

So there you have it, George. As I stated at the beginning, there is no one answer; it all depends on the criteria that being used.

Robert Barber did most of the research for this column.

I’m planning a trip with the grandkids this summer. On our itinerary is a stop at the Seattle Space Needle which was built for the 1962 World’s Fair. This has got me to thinking about world fairs – haven’t heard too much about them in the past few years. What’s the story? Are they still being held? If so, when will there be another? – Ralph S.

Well, Ralph, world fairs are still happening. The most recent one was held in Aichi Prefecture, Japan in 2005. The next fair will open on 18 June 2008 in Zaragosa, Spain. For fair lovers that’s the good news. The bad news is that the United States has not been host to a world’s fair since the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition in New Orleans and has not participated in one, since Aichi 2005.

Ever since 1992, when the United States Information Agency closed its World’s Fair office, the US has been reducing its participation in the world fairs. In 1999, Congress banned federal financing of world fairs which forced organizers to turn to corporate sponsorship. Then in 2002, we dropped out of the Bureau des Expositions (BIE) which is the Paris-based organization that sanctions world’s fairs.

When you consider that the world expositions have been cited “as the third largest event in the world in terms of economic and cultural impact, after the FIFA World Cup and the Olympic Games” it is a shame that the United States is no longer a participant.

Ralph, you might want to give the grandkids some background on the world fairs. You could tell them that the world fairs got their start during the 1750s. They began with large-scale exhibitions in England and France. It would take another 100 years for the concept of the world fair or exposition to really come into its own. The Crystal Palace Exposition of 1851 in London was the first truly international exposition. It was billed as the “Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations”. The event was hugely successful and provided the inspiration for the many exhibitions that would follow.

For the next hundred years the emphasis would be on manufactured products, technology, and trade. Nations vied for the honor of creating the most state-of-the-art examples of science and technology. The expositions were grand in scale and scope. The Paris Exhibition of 1889 gave the world the Eiffel Tower. Chicago’s 1893 Columbian Exposition introduced the Ferris wheel, Cracker Jack, alternating current (AC), and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Some of the toys your grandchildren may play with were introduced at world fairs. The Etch A Sketch debuted at the 1939 World Fair in San Francisco and the View-Master was introduced at the 1940 New York Worlds Fair.

You might want to read Thomas Wolfe’s novella entitled The Lost Boy. This little gem which is Wolfe’s fictionalized account of an incident from his own past, features a trip to the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. Another writer who has found inspiration in the world fairs is E. L. Doctorow. His book World’s Fair features the 1939 New York World Fair. Most recently, Erik Larson has written The Devil in the White City, a non-fiction account of the activities of a serial murderer who preyed on young women attending the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.
Over time, the focus for the world fairs has altered somewhat. With the New York World’s Fair of 1939 and the Stockholm World’s Fair of 1949 the emphasis became one of opportunity for cultural exchange and the exchange of ideas. The fairs also started to adopt themes. The New York’s 1939 World’s Fair had as its theme the “World of Tomorrow”. The second New York world’s fair in 1964 was dedicated to “Peace through Understanding”. The Aichi Expo’s theme was “Nature’s Wisdom”, with national and corporate pavilions expressing themes of ecological co-existence, renewable technology, and the wonders of nature.

The Expos (as they have come to be known) have also acquired another purpose. Since Expo’92, the fairs have served as a means to achieve recognition and what some term “nation branding”. In 1992, Spain hired the branding expert Wally Olins to help promote its image as a modern, democratic country and emphasize its prominence in the EU and the global community.

So, you see the world fairs have entertained, educated, and inspired us. They have influenced our architecture, our transportation systems, our literature, our world view, and our lives. That is probably why so many people are working so hard to prepare a bid to host the 2020 World Expo.

Much of the research for this column was carried out by Robert Barber. One of the tools he used was the EBSCO MasterFILE Premier which is part of the Georgetown Public Library’s subscription to the TexShare database. Through TexShare, patrons have access to an incredible virtual research library. Users can access full-text articles from popular magazines, professional journals, newspapers, e-books, and academic references. To learn more visit www.tsl.state.tx.us/texshare/gobeyond or stop by the Georgetown Public Library reference desk and we’ll be glad to set you up with the log-on and password.

I’m curious about the Easter-time tradition of serving “hot cross buns”. I understand the symbolism of the cross, but how did the custom get started? – Frances Shull
Traditionally hot cross buns are a sweet, spiced yeast bun made with currants.The buns are actually part of a tradition older than Christianity. Early spring festivals usually featured wheat cakes or breads. According to some researchers, these baked goods were often shaped into round buns representing the full moon, with lines forming a cross dividing them into quarters. For the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians the divisions symbolized the four lunar quarters.
With the advent of Christianity the cross became a symbol for the crucifixion. Originally, people referred to the buns simply as “cross buns”. Perhaps because the buns were a favorite way to break the fast after the last day of Lent; they were sometimes called “Good Friday buns”. According to most sources the first recorded use of the term “hot cross bun” occurred in the early 1700s. It is generally accepted that “hot” became a part of the nomenclature as a result of the street vendors cry “’Hot cross buns, one a penny, two a penny”.
Well into the 18th century there were many who believed that bread or buns baked on Good Friday had special properties. This idea evolved from the belief that Good Friday should be a day for mourning and nothing else. The only activity that was acceptable was baking and that was because tradition held that on his way to Calvary, Jesus had blessed a woman who gave him bread. Thus, to those who believed, bread baked on Good Friday was specially blessed. The buns would not get moldy, had medicinal properties, and some even believed, they brought good luck.
Many believed that saving a cross bun from Good Friday would ensure good fortune. In the Victorian era, the wives of seaman often gave their husbands a cross bun to take to sea as protection against shipwrecks.
At the Widow’s Son pub in East London several of these traditions come together. If you venture inside you will see a net suspended from the ceiling. The net contains the moldy, crumbling remains of hundreds of “hot cross buns” from years gone by.

The story goes that a widow once owned the property on which the pub now stands. This widow had a son who went to sea for many years. One day she received a letter from him with the news that he would be home by Easter. Knowing how much her son enjoyed cross buns on Good Friday, she set aside one for his arrival. Alas, the young man did not make it home for that Easter or for any other. He never came home. Nevertheless, each year on Good Friday, his widowed mother put aside another bun in the hopes that her son would one day come home.

After the widow died, her home was sold and a pub was built on the site. To honor the memory of the widow and her devotion to her son, on each Good Friday since then, a cross bun is added to the buns in the net that hangs from the ceiling. The Widow’s Son pub on Devon’s Road now has a collection of well over 200 buns. Each Good Friday a sailor adds a specially baked bun to the centuries of leftovers. Then everyone in attendance sits down to enjoy a breakfast of “hot cross buns”. Part of this Baffle the Bookworm column was contributed by Robert Barber

When was cotton candy invented? – R. B.

Long before the advent of cotton candy, in fact as far back as the 1400s, spun sugar was used to create fanciful desserts and decorations. By the 18^th century, master confectioners in Europe and America handcrafted spun sugar nests as Easter decorations and wove webs of silver and gold spun sugar for elaborate dessert presentations. However, the creation of spun sugar confections was an expensive, labor-intensive endeavor and the average person could not afford such luxuries. That all changed on January 31, 1899, when two candy makers, William Morrison and John C. Wharton from Nashville, Tennessee were granted U.S. Patent #618,428 for an electric machine that spun melted sugar into edible candy threads using centrifugal force. Cotton candy, called Fairy Floss by the inventors, was introduced to the world in 1900 at the Paris Exposition and then again in 1904 at the St. Louis World Fair. Morrison and Wharton sold boxes of their “Fairy Floss” for twenty-five cents. That was a pretty pricey treat because the admission price to the 1904 World Fair was itself only fifty cents. Despite the somewhat high price for the sugary concoction, Morrison and Wharton sold an astonishing 68,655 boxes amounting to gross sales of $17, 163.75.

Why do we celebrate Valentine’s Day? — PCS

Who sent the first Valentine card to their sweetheart? – RLV

There are no definitive answers to either of these questions. The celebration of the feast of Saint Valentine began so long ago that its history consists mostly of legend and tradition. To further complicate matters, in the early Christian Church there were at least three martyrs named Valentine or Valentinus.

The role of patron saint of lovers can be traced to a legend that portrayed Valentine as a priest who was put to death for his defiance of the Emperor Claudius II. Apparently, Claudius believed that young males made better soldiers if they weren’t hampered by attachments to wives and families. As Claudius needed lots of soldiers to maintain his empire, he decreed that young men would not be permitted to marry. Believing this was an injustice, Valentine continued to perform marriages for young lovers. Claudius put a stop to the marriages by having Valentine put to death.

In other legends, it was Saint Valentine who sent the first “valentine”. The story goes that while Valentine was imprisoned he fell in love with his jailor’s daughter. Before his execution, Valentine wrote her a letter which he signed “from your Valentine”.

Whether or not 14 February was the date of Valentine’s birth or his execution is not known. It may be that the date was chosen to counteract the influence of the traditional Roman feast of Lupercalia. This Roman festival was celebrated between the 13^th and 15^th of February and was the occasion for among other things a lottery that paired up young men and women for the year. Needless to say, the early Christian Church denounced these “love lotteries” as pagan rituals. At any rate, around 498 AD Pope Gelasius I decreed the feast of St. Valentine would be celebrated on 14 February. Old festivals die hard though, and the love lotteries persisted well into the medieval period.

During the Middle Ages the whole romance aspect of Valentine’s Day was reinforced by the commonly held belief that the middle of February was the time that birds would choose their mates. Long before Cole Porter wrote the lines “…birds do it, bees do it. Even educated fleas do it. Let’s do it, let’s fall in love.” people came to look upon mid-February as a special time for lovers to make known their affection. Over time, it became the custom to exchange love letters and tokens.

Written valentines began to appear around the year 1400. They were usually brief notes expressing affection and often given anonymously. The manuscript collection of the British Library contains what is probably the oldest example of a valentine. It was a poem written in 1415 by the French nobleman Charles, Duke of Orleans to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. Charles was held hostage by the English for some twenty-five years, so he had plenty of time to write poetry. He became particularly well-known for writing what were called “poetical or amorous addresses.”

The oldest known Valentine message written in English is a part of another collection at the British Library. It is a letter written in 1477 by Margery Brews to her fiancé John Paston. In it, Margery pledges her undying devotion and explains that she has sought her mother’s help in convincing her father to increase her dowry, but if John truly loves her he will marry her anyway. If you would like to see Margery’s letter you can visit the British Library web site at http://www.imagesonline.bl.uk/gallery.asp# and search for image shelf mark 056820.

During the 1600s, valentines were handmade using colored papers and inks. The familiar “roses are red, violets are blue…” verses became popular sometime in the 1700s. The advent of the “penny post” and printed valentines further encouraged the practice of sending Valentine’s greetings so that by the end of the 18^th century Valentine’s Day was wildly popular throughout England.

The first Valentines in America were exchanged during the Revolutionary War period and were mostly handmade with flowery, sentimental verse written in fancy script. In 1849, Esther A. Howland began selling her hand-made valentines. Esther was so successful with this venture that she founded her own publishing company. By the 1870s, she was the head of a firm that specialized in mass-produced valentines.

Classroom exchanges became popular during the 1920s. According to the Greeting Card Association, this year an estimated 800 million valentines will be exchanged in classrooms across the U.S. In addition to the classroom exchanges, another 190 million cards will be exchanged.

Approximately 70% of all valentines purchased are mailed, but eValentines are gaining in popularity. At AmericanGreetings.com it is estimated that “nearly 10 million e-cards will be sent this Valentine’s Day.”