Valentine's Day

Today's 14th Feb, and I remembered reading about the origins of Valentine's Day on the book titled The Origins of Everyday Things published by Reader's Digest.

Let me attempt to summarise the origins of Valentine's Day from this book even though I profess that I am no expert at summarising. At some point, I shall extract directly from the article from the book. Here goes:

Spring time has been associated with the season of love. This is the time when animals usually mate. In ancient Rome, people celebrated the festival of Lupercalia on 15 Feb. In general, the ancients viewed the Lupercalia as a purification and fertility rite.

Around the 4th century, the Church initiated the festival of St Valentine's Day on 14 Feb to replace the heathen nature of the rites performed during Lupercalia. From 13th century a set of customs developed around the festival. Women who were not partnered could be won in the Valentine lottery. Luck, accident and anonymity characterised the spirit of the festival. These resulted in the traditional belief that the first person seen on 14 Feb would be one's love for the rest of the the year.

Red roses were first given as a St Valentine's Day gift in 18th-century France, in imitation of Louis XVI's tokens of love to his queen.

For more about Valentine's Day, you may wish to pick up and read The Origins of Everyday Things. It's quite interesting to read.

On Valentine's Day today, I spent quite a fair bit of my evening time with my "husband", the double bass. Somehow there is a momentum for practising on the instrument for the past few days. I managed to practise that difficult section from the Bach's Suite No. 2, I hope I could play it with greater ease the next rehearsal.

It can be quite stressful to be the principal of the section. The conductor's eyes are on the principal if the section fails to play well. The rest of the section will follow the principal, so the principal better lead the section well. The audience will very often judge the calibre of the section based on the calibre of the principal. What great responsibility. I have learnt that perhaps the best and most effective way to relax even when one is the principal player, is to practice, practice and practice until playing becomes fun and almost effortless. So, I guess I have to take the lead to practice. It is admittedly not quite easy to find time to practice regularly. Afterall, my profession is in social work, not music.

Whatever it is, I have had quite a satisfying time practising on my instrument this evening.

By the way, I could say that I have received quite a good Valentine's Day gift tonight, delivered by the efficient UPS. I paid for the gift though, but it still delighted me nevertheless for I have been waiting for it for quite a while.

I had ordered the educational materials about a month ago, but was told that one of them was out-of-stock. As such, I had to wait till recently for the stock to come in before I could get it delivered for me all the way from Southern California to Singapore. Anyway, Lemur Music, which I have always been ordering my double bass related music scores from, have always been very efficient. Beside, I already knew that the item was out-of-stock at my time of order, but I still went ahead to order it. To make myself happy, I shall trust that Lemur Music has probably tried to rush my order to me as fast as it could. It probably did. When I checked out its site, that item remains out-of-stock.

Anyway, hope your Valentine's Day has been pleasant.