Valentine´s Day and Traditions Connected to It

Valentine´s Day is a religious holiday that originates from ancient times, this fact, however, is not common knowledge anymore. Saint Valentine was the patron saint of lovers, fiancées, newlyweds, as well as of people with mental diseases and epileptics. Several legends are connected to his name. According to one of them, Saint Valentine had, with the help of his faith, helped a blind girl to see again just before he was executed during the reign of Roman emperor Claudius II. A day before his execution, on 14th February, Saint Valentine sent a goodbye note to this very same girl and signed it with “Your Valentine”. This is where the day of those who are in love originates from and this is one of the most common explanations of the tradition of sending Valentine notes.

Valentine´s Day in connection to different folk customs, weather predictions and love superstitions…

In the regions where Hungarian is spoken, on this very day, the housewives used to make the broody hens sit on eggs while their husbands believed that the saplings planted on this day would grow strong roots sooner.

Based on the weather conditions, they would forecast the outcome of the harvest. If the weather was dry and cold, then the harvest would turn out to be a rich one. In several places, housewives believed that windy weather was a sign that there would be no eggs all year long. Men, on the other hand, thought that if it rained, the only good crop in the upcoming year would be corn.

It is common knowledge that this day was all about predictions concerning future husbands and how to catch them, so girls would do many different things to be true to tradition. They thought, for instance, that if a girl went out to a cemetery exactly at midnight on the night before Valentine´s Day, she would see her future husband. But if a girl put a bay leaf under her pillow, she would see her future husband in her dreams.

In order to bewitch their chosen one, girls would secretly put the seeds of an apple that had exactly nine seeds in the pocket of their chosen one because this would assure them that the boy would be faithful to them all his life.

On Valentine´s Day, birds get their fair share of the game, too. According to folk observation, sparrows get loud on this day because this is how they announce the coming of spring.  What is more, people also thought that on Valentine´s Day, birds chose their mates and this is also when their nuptials took place.