Photograph by George Sakkestad
Blossom Hill School student Matt Perrone makes a valentine for a resident of The Terraces, located across the street from the school.
In preparation for Valentine's Day, schoolchildren use red and white in their art projects, sing songs and sample the sweets customary to the holiday. They also learn that the day is about friendship as well as love.
At Blossom Hill School last week, kindergarteners, first- and second-graders made valentines for the senior citizens living across the street at The Terraces. Blending traditional with high-tech, some students used computers and color printers to create fanciful cards, while others tackled the job with scissors, paste and construction paper.
"It's such a big holiday for little kids. We try to think of it as a cheerful holiday where we let people know we're thinking of them. Kids need to learn to give and make others happy," Principal Sue Russ says.
As for exchanging valentines with each other, students are instructed to bring enough for everyone in their class, sign the cards, but not address them with anyone's name. That way, everyone receives the same amount and no one feels forgotten or unliked.
But where did the whole Valentine's Day tradition start?
During the ancient festival of Lupercalia, held Feb. 15, people gathered in a grotto on the Palatine Hill in Rome. Priests dressed in goatskins led an homage to the god-protector Lupercus the Wolf Killer, who was believed to protect the people from wolves that menaced the countryside.
The priests flung thongs of goatskin--called a februa--smeared with sacrificial blood on nearby women, which was thought to ensure fertility. Meaning "means of purification," the februa eventually lent February its name.
As part of Lupercalian revels, girls' names were written on pieces of paper and placed in a box, from which boys drew the name of the girls who would be their "sweethearts" for the next year. Birds were also believed to choose their mates in mid-February.
In A.D. 496, Pope Gelasius declared the so-called "Lovers' Festival" would be moved to Feb. 14--the day on which Christian martyr St. Valentine was clubbed and beheaded in the year A.D. 270. Names of saints were later substituted for girls' names, in the hopes that participants would emulate the lives of the saints they drew.
Girls' names were back in vogue in Europe by the 16th century, and eventually Valentine's Day customs grew to include sending messages or anonymous notes to the object of one's hopes and desires.
Modern-day romance may not spring from propitiously drawn slips of paper, but it can and does have origins in circumstances as diverse as the individuals who celebrate (or bemoan) the arrival of Valentine's Day.
A Los Gatos entrepreneur recalls that her first encounter with her future sweetheart was embarrassing, to say the least. It happened more than a decade ago, when she was an 18-year-old Slovenian exchange student at San Jose's Branham High School. Sitting in English class the first week of school, she made a mistake while using a pencil. Because she had learned British English, she was not familiar with all the ways it differed from American English.
"I didn't know anyone in the class, but I needed an eraser," said the Los Gatan, who asked that we not use her name. "So I turned around and asked this guy behind me," she recalls. The word she used, however, was not "eraser" but the term the British use--one that describes what an eraser is made of--"rubber." When the young man and the rest of the class broke out in laughter, she began to understand that English and American were not exactly the same language. After class, her teacher explained that high-school students didn't think of rubbers as erasers.
Although she and the boy had never spoken before, he felt so bad about embarrassing her that he asked her out to see the sights of San Jose and enjoy a movie and dinner on him.
Several years later, she returned to California to study, and the romance began in earnest. The couple married in June 1993.
Ann Martin and Gilbert "Gil" Rowland were not expecting to meet each other either, but the Presbyterian Church of Los Gatos brought them together. Both widowed, they enjoyed the fellowship of coffee socials following Sunday services.
One day Rowland struck up a conversation with Martin and showed a genuine interest in her answers. "Being that we knew a lot of the same people there, we felt comfortable. After a while, I began to realize how much fun it was being with Gil," Martin says.
When their many mutual friends discovered they were dating, they were delighted. "It was just like we were a young couple or something!" she says, taking particular pleasure in recounting how a friend curiously inquired: "Do you kiss?" It meant a great deal, Martin adds, that everyone gave such positive feedback about the relationship: her old friends, Rowland's old friends, and the children both of them had from prior marriages were all very supportive.
The couple were married in 1990 at--appropriately enough--the Presbyterian Church of Los Gatos.
"It's kind of baffling--you wonder how you can think of someone in a romantic way again. But life goes on, it really does. You have to learn to adjust and change," Martin says.
For Albert and Minnie Wallace, married life has gone on for more than seven decades. Former Los Gatans now residing in Santa Clara, the Wallaces celebrated the 72nd anniversary of their Dec. 1, 1923, wedding at a December party hosted by their daughter, former Monte Sereno City Clerk Fay Furtado Stuckey and her husband, Dr. Lloyd Stuckey.
From 1946 through 1994, the Wallaces lived in Los Gatos, Albert as head custodian at Fisher Middle School and Minnie as a "Meadow Gold Girl" at the old Los Gatos Meadow Gold Creamery. Both retired in 1967. Their descendants include eight children, 20 grandchildren, 27 great-grandchildren and eight great-great-grandchildren.
Minnie, now 90, says she and Albert, now 91, first met in Munday, Texas, where they grew up. He and another boy "crashed, so to speak," a party she was having with several teenage girls. She said she asked him who he was, and after that, they started going out. "We started liking each other right away," Minnie recalls.
"They're very proud of the fact that they've been married 72 years; they think it's quite a feat," Stuckey says." They like to say, 'Soon it'll be 73 years!' My dad's more sentimental than my mom. He always brought her flowers for Valentine's Day, and he always remembers her birthday and their anniversary."
Minnie attributes their successful 72-year marriage to "a lot of hard work and clean living."
"We worked hard and loved each other," Albert adds. "I wouldn't have had it any other way!"
Young adults in today's world face situations quite different from the Wallaces' time, according to Kinerette Hasson, a 20-something herself who serves as director of singles and young-adult programs at the Addison-Penzak Jewish Community Center in Los Gatos.
"Judging by how successful and popular [singles'] groups like this are, it seems that people are having trouble meeting other single people. It's really hard once they get out of college, aside from old school friends and people they meet at work," Hasson says.
Her favorite part of working with singles is watching them meet through a non-threatening, structured social event and then "connect" and decide to continue socializing independent of the group. Since September 1995, when she began working at the JCC, Hasson has seen several couples get together, with many others dating.
"People this age are very conscious of being single or not single. Also, they tend to go in and out of being single. But no matter what they call themselves, they go [to social events] to meet people," Hasson says, adding that Valentine's Day may cause undue trouble for people in relationships.
At a minimum, Hasson has noticed, men are often expected to procure roses, candy and a card for the women in their lives, or else be "in trouble." She thinks some men would appreciate opportunities to do something more creative, which does not necessarily focus solely on material things.
Creativity is definitely a forte of Los Gatos native Brian Borgia, who last year published Northern California's Guide for Fun, Excitement and Romance through his local publishing company, the aptly named Valentine Press. With 80 percent of his inventory already sold, Borgia is planning an expanded and revised edition of the book for early 1997.
Currently residing in Monterey, Borgia says he wrote the book in part to remedy the "where do you want to go?" and "I don't know; where do you want to go?" questions people often ask, whether casually dating or married many years.
"Some people approach Valentine's Day like an anniversary, where they do everything at the last minute. But, why reduce this romantic holiday to a gift of flowers and candy?" Borgia asks.
"Valentine's Day should be every day of the year, not just one. Show your significant other how much you care by taking them somewhere special. Taking time to talk is also really important."
For those with higher budgets, Borgia suggests a gourmet dinner and dancing cruise on the San Francisco Bay, a hot air balloon trip at sunrise or a weekend getaway at
a secluded bed and breakfast in
the mountains.
Middle and low budgets are not a problem either, he says, explaining that some of the most meaningful gifts can be the least expensive. Toasting marshmallows and star-gazing around a beach bonfire works well, as does writing up little "coupons" to be redeemed for favors and goodies at a later time.
A couple can take a trip to the place where they first met--perhaps giggling over old love notes along the way--or one of them can make a collage of pictures that show the couple over the months or years they have been together. "These gifts are personal and they mean a lot," Borgia adds.
According to psychotherapist Andrea Galen Woods, who is also a counselor with Triad Community Services, the absence of a relationship can cause problems during holidays, such as Valentine's Day, Christmas or New Year's Eve, when society casts molds for how people should celebrate. In her profession, she says, statistics show a correlation between depression and suicide rates and major holidays.
"For a single person, Valentine's Day can be a time when they feel 'less than,' as defined by our culture. They should use the holiday as an excuse to do something fun and fulfilling for themselves. There's a relationship with the self that has to be nurtured before you're ready to be with others," Woods explains.
She suggests singles do something that "feeds the soul," whether it be treating themselves to a massage, attending a concert with a group of friends, spending time in the outdoors or going on a shopping spree with a best friend--preferably single!
When relationships are established, Woods adds, problems often arise during the transition out of "the romance stage," when couples get to know each other on a deeper level. This is when they discover each others' shortcomings and where cute quirks can become annoying habits.
"People need to have room to grow and change. A longer relationship means work--working on compromise and friendship and knowing it's not always going to be the same as it was in the beginning," she says. As far as the romantic notion of "true love," Woods says people need to focus more on the realistic than the idealistic. All people have different definitions and expectations of love, which is OK, as long as they have acceptance from and for others.
"Love is something that takes time, just like trust. It has to be earned. Love has to allow both people to grow and develop and realize their own wholeness," Woods says.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, February 14, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved