Valentine clipart-- free to use!
*Wonderful* Valentine clipart--free to use! It has hearts, cupids, backgrounds, and even animations.
HISTORY OF VALENTINE'S DAY
Why do we celebrate this holiday?
St. Valentine's Day, contains vestiges of both Christian and ancient Roman tradition. Who was Saint
Valentine and how did he become associated with this ancient rite?
One legend contends that Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor
Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed
marriage for young men -- his crop of potential soldiers.
Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for
young
lovers in secret.
When Valentine's actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death. Other stories
suggest
that Valentine may have been killed for attempting to help Christians escape harsh Roman prisons where they
were often beaten and tortured.
According to one legend, Valentine actually sent the first 'valentine' greeting himself. While in
prison, it is believed that Valentine fell in love with a young girl -- who may have been his jailor's
daughter -- who visited him during his confinement. Before his death, it is alleged that he wrote her a
letter, which he signed 'From your Valentine,' an expression that is still in use today.
Valentine's Day Traditions
Making Valentines: A Tradition in America
Designed to show the evolution of the Valentine's Day card features annotated images of early Valentine
cards from before 1850, background about Esther Allen Howland (an innovator in Valentine card design and
production, who began making and selling Valentines in the 1850s), the George C. Whitney Valentine
manufacturing company, which was in business from 1866 to 1942, and Victorian cards. From the American
Antiquarian Society.
Celebrate
St. Modomnoc's Day
February 13th
Modomnoc is the patron of bees and beekepers, and is said to
have
been so beloved by the bees at his Welsh monastery that they followed his ship back to his formerly bee-less
homeland of Ireland.
Modomnoc's Day falls on the 13th of February, and we commemorate him by sending yellow and black
homemade
modomnocs to friends and enjoying delicious honey-sweetened goodies. There is no deep root to this
celebration
-- the saint's story and day are traditional, but the details are simply recent, fun inventions. Why
get
caught up in the commercialized cherubic stickiness of Valentine's Day, when you can celebrate true
sweetness and the simple joys of pollenation?
Comic
Valentine
Two splendid comic valentines lampooning the men responsible for
producing large numbers of these reproachful and insulting sheets - the lithographic printer and
wood engraver 2 ancient forms of technology used in the day. "These scurrilous printed sheets, entered
into the humour of the common and middle classes, fun and mischief were their elements. In reality they were
masterpieces of the grotesque, venomous in humour, spiteful and rude, expressing anything but love."
Information about the origin, size, and approximate date of each card is included along with selections from
period newspapers.
There's a DANCE called "Valentine's Day"; the tune used is
"The Maid in the Moon". ~
It's in Peter Barnes's "English Country Dance Tunes" (under "Valentine's
Day",
and he notes the date as 1651, which would put it in the first edition of Playford's Dancing
Master
-- however, the first edition online lists neither "The Maid (Mayd) in the Moon" nor
"Valentine's Day". The dance was published in "C D& S Annual 3", which
abbreviation Barnes neglects to spell out, but it sounds like "Country Dance & Song Annual 3".
It's possible the English Folk Dance & Song Society (EFDSS) at Cecil Sharp House would have
it.
"Valentine's Day" is an old English Country Dance (The tune is called "The Maid in the
Moon" in the 1st edition of the Dancing Master). You'll find the tune in The Barnes Book of English
Country Dance Tunes (revised), p.
133--also a facsimile in Robert Keller's data base of The Dancing Master at www.colonialmusic.org. An essay about the dance and its use in
America in 1730, and a reconstruction of the dance with a picture of its track in Feuillet's Recueil of
1706 is in Keller and Fogg's _Country Dances from Colonial New York, James Alexander's Notebook,
1730_, available at the same site. It's one of the best dance tunes in the repertory.
KISSNG
The Kiss / Thomas A. Edison, Inc. Based on
the earlier Edison film, May Irwin kiss (1896).
From Edison films catalog: Nothing new, but an old thing done over again and done well. Some one has
attempted
to describe a kiss as "something made of nothing," but this is not one of that kind, but one of
those old fashioned "home made" kind that sets the whole audience into merriment and motion, and
has
always proven a popular subject. It is very fine photographically and an exhibit is not complete without it.
Valentine: Hormone can enhance brain activity associated with love and sex
The Aba Daba Honeymoon
words and music by Fields and Donovan ; performed by Collins and Harlan. Orange, N.J. :
Edison, ca. 1914 Copyright: Leo Feist Inc.
Way down in the Congoland
Lived a happy chimpanzee.
She loved a monkey with long tail
(Lordy, how she loved him!)
Each night he would find her there,
Swinging in the cocoanut tree,
And the monkey gay,
At the break of day,
Loved to hear his Chimpie say:
"Aba, daba, daba, daba, daba, daba, dab,"
Said the Chimpie to the Monk,
"Baba, daba, daba, daba, daba, daba, dab,"
Said the Monkey to the Chimp.
All night long they'd chatter away,
All day long there were happy and gay,
Swinging and singing in their hunky-tonkey way.
"Aba, daba, daba, daba, daba, daba, dab,"
Means "Monk, I love but you."
"Baba, daba, dab," in monkey talk
Means "Chimp, I love you, too."
Then the big baboon one night in June,
He married them and very soon,
They went upon their aba, daba honeymoon.
"Aba, daba, daba, daba, daba, daba, dab,"
Said the Chimpie to the Monk,
"Baba, daba, daba, daba, daba, daba, dab,"
Said the Monkey to the Chimp.
All night long they'd chatter away,
All day long there were happy and gay,
Swinging and singing in their hunky-tonkey way.
"Aba, daba, daba, daba, daba, daba, dab,"
Means "Monk, I love but you."
"Baba, daba, dab," in monkey talk
Means "Chimp, I love you, too."
One night they were made man and wife,
And now they cry, "This is the life,"
Since they came from their aba, daba honeymoon.
Well, you should have heard that band
Play upon their wedding day,
Each Chimp and Monkey had nutshells
(Lordy, how they played them)
And now it is ev'ry night,
High up in the cocoanut tree.
It's the same old thing,
With the same old swing,
When the Monk and Chimpie sing:
"Aba, daba, daba, daba, daba, daba, dab,"
Said the Chimpie to the Monk,
"Baba, daba, daba, daba, daba, daba, dab,"
Said the Monkey to the Chimp.
All night long they'd chatter away,
All day long there were happy and gay,
Swinging and singing in their hunky-tonkey way.
"Aba, daba, daba, daba, daba, daba, dab,"
Means "Monk, I love but you."
"Baba, daba, dab," in monkey talk
Means "Chimp, I love you, too."
Then the big baboon one night in June,
He married them and very soon,
They went upon their aba, daba honeymoon.
"Aba, daba, daba, daba, daba, daba, dab,"
Said the Chimpie to the Monk,
"Baba, daba, daba, daba, daba, daba, dab,"
Said the Monkey to the Chimp.
All night long they'd chatter away,
All day long there were happy and gay,
Swinging and singing in their hunky-tonkey way.
"Aba, daba, daba, daba, daba, daba, dab,"
Means "Monk, I love but you."
"Baba, daba, dab," in monkey talk
Means "Chimp, I love you, too."
One night they were made man and wife,
And now they cry, "This is the life,"
Since they came from their aba, daba honeymoon.
Kissing to the right begins in the womb 2/13/03
Two thirds of us instinctively tilt our heads to the right when we kiss, reveals a new study timed to
coincide
with Valentine's Day.
The 2:1 ratio matches our preference for using the right foot, eye and ear. The bias probably has its
origins
in our tendency to turn our heads to the right in the womb and for up to six months after birth, says the
study's author, Onur Güntürkün.
Güntürkün, of the Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, observed 124 couples swapping kisses at airports,
railway stations, beaches and parks in Germany, Turkey and the US.
"Twice as many adults turn their heads to the right as to the left when kissing, showing that this
head-motor bias persists into adulthood," he says. He claims he is not interested in kissing itself at
all, but in how asymmetry develops in humans.
2015: Feb. 14 U.S. Census Bureau Facts for Features: Valentine's Day
2006 U.S. Census Bureau Facts for Features: Valentine's Day
- 180 million - Number of Valentine's Day cards exchanged annually, making Valentine's Day the second-most popular greeting-card-giving occasion. (This total excludes packaged kids valentines for classroom exchanges.) (Source: Hallmark research)
- 1,271- Number of locations producing chocolate and cocoa products in 2003. These establishments employed 43,379 people. California led the nation in the number of such establishments (with 146) followed by Pennsylvania (with 120).
- $422 million - The combined wholesale value of domestically produced cut flowers in 2004 for all flower-producing businesses in 36 states with $100,000 or more in sales. Among states, California was the leading producer, alone accounting for nearly three-quarters of this amount ($304 million).
CHINA - Qixi Festival Chinese Valentine's Day
China's Qixi Festival takes place on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month (mid-August by our
calendars) and has its root in an ancient legend about two lovers separated by the Milky Way who can only
meet
once a year on this night.
Qixi festival tells the story of Niulang, the cowherd, who fell in love with a beautiful fairy Zhinu when
grazing his cow. But their love was interfered with by Wangmu, wife of the Jade Emperor, the Supreme Deity
in
Taoism. She separated the couple by drawing a river, the Milky Way, with her hairpin between them. Touched
by
their love, magpies come in flocks every Qixi festival to form a bridge spanning the galaxy with their
bodies
so that the couple can meet. The festival is also celebrated in Japan on July 7, where it is known as
Tanabata.