How Romantic We Are

In honor of the holiday, a Washington state history professor writes in today's NYTimes to explain the recent and decidedly untraditional origins of modern love and courtship. In 498 A.D., when the Catholic Church posthumously decided to honor the martyred St. Valentine, "almost no one believed that falling in love was a great and glorious thing that should lead to marriage, or that marriage was a place to achieve sexual fulfillment." (Rather, the holiday served to undercut the pagan orgiastic festival of Lupercalia.) In fact, Prof. Coontz tells us,

Until 200 years ago, courtship was not typically conducted at dinners by candlelight or trysts under the moon, but negotiated by parents, cousins, neighbors and lawyers in the light of day. People married to consummate a property transaction or political alliance, or to work a farm together. A wedding was not the happy ending to a passionate romance. It was often the unhappy ending to one partner's romance with someone else.

If the Virginians driving around with those "traditional marriage" license plates look sour and bitter, now you know why.