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I drew thee to my Valentine.

The lot was cast and then I drew

And fortune said it should be you.

Comic valentines are also traditional. The habit of sending gifts is dying out, which must be disappointing for the manufacturers, who nevertheless still hopefully dish out presents for Valentine’s Day in an attempt to cash in. and the demand for valentines is increasing. According to one manufacturer, an estimated 30 million cards will have been sent by
January, 14 – and not all cheap stuff, either.

Holidays and traditions in English – speaking countries.

“Our cards cost from 6d to 15s 6d”, he says, but “ardent youngsters” want to pay more.” They can pay more. I saw a red satin heart-shaped cushion enthroning a “pearl” necklace and earrings for 25s. Another, in velvet bordered with gold lace, topped with a gilt leaf brooch, was 21s
(and if anyone buys them … well, it must be love!).

There are all kinds:

The sick joke – reclining lady on the front, and inside she will “kick you in the ear”.

The satirical – “You are charming, witty, intelligent, etc.”, and “if you believe all this you must be …” – inside the card you find an animated cuckoo clock.

And the take-off of the sentimental – “Here’s the key to my heart … use it before I change the lock”.

And the attempts to send a serious message without being too sickly, ending with variations of “mine” and “thine” and “Valentine”.

So in the 20th century, when there are no longer any bars to communication between the sexes, the love missives of an older, slower time, edged carefully over the counters by the publishers and shopkeepers, still surge through the letter boxes.

PANCAKE DAY

Pancake Day is the popular name for Shrove Tuesday, the day preceding the first day of Lent. In medieval times the day was characterized by merrymaking and feasting, a relic of which is the eating of pancakes.
Whatever religious significance Shrove Tuesday may have possessed in the olden days, it certainly has none now. A Morning Star correspondent who went to a cross-section of the people he knew to ask what they knew about
Shrove Tuesday received these answers:

“It’s the day when I say to my wife: ‘Why don’t we make pancakes?’ and she says, ‘No, not this Tuesday! Anyway, we can make them any time.’”

“It is a religious festival the significance of which escapes me. What
I do remember is that it is Pancake Day and we as children used to brag about how many pancakes we had eaten.”

“It’s pancake day and also the day of the student rags. Pancakes – luscious, beautiful pancakes. I never know the date – bears some relationship to some holy day.”

The origin of the festival is rather obscure, as is the origin of the custom of pancake eating.

Elfrica Viport, in her book on Christian Festivals, suggests that since the ingredients of the pancakes were all forbidden by the Church during Lent then they just had to be used up the day before.

Nancy Price in a book called Pagan’s Progress suggests that the pancake was a “thin flat cake eaten to stay the pangs of hunger before going to be shriven” (to confession).

Holidays and traditions in English – speaking countries.

In his Seasonal Feasts and Festivals E. O. James links up Shrove
Tuesday with the Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) festivals or warmer countries.
These jollifications were an integral element of seasonal ritual for the purpose of promoting fertility and conquering the malign forces of evil, especially at the approach of spring.”

The most consistent form of celebration in the old days was the all- over-town ball game or tug-of-war in which everyone let rip before the traditional feast, tearing here and tearing there, struggling to get the ball or rope into their part of the town. It seems that several dozen towns kept up these ball games until only a few years ago.

E. O. James in his book records instances where the Shrove Tuesday celebrations became pitched battles between citizens led by the local church authorities.

Today the only custom that is consistently observed throughout Britain is pancake eating, though here and there other customs still seem to survive. Among the latter, Pancake Races, the Pancake Greaze custom and
Ashbourne’s Shrovetide Football are the best known. Shrovetide is also the time of Student Rags.

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