Valentine's Day

VALENTINE’S DAY

Copyright John Marshall 2009

John Marshall is a writer and teacher who has had the great fortune to live in Krakow for several years. Krakow’s been good to him and, he hopes, he’s been good to Krakow.

Well, it’s that time of year again: Valentine’s Day. February 14th, the night which lovers celebrate and singletons dread almost as much as New Year’s Eve. Well, maybe ‘dread’ is too strong a word. But you know what I mean. On that most romantic of nights, anyone who dares to appear in public without a significant other bearing a classic Polish long-stemmed rose will be given a suspicious, sideways look by the silent majority, that is to say couples.

Valentine’s Day: not a good time to be single. But you can’t always time these things, can you? Well, you shouldn’t! I have a Polish friend whose love life ebbs and flows not according to the procession of the moon and stars across the heavens but to his rather more mundane state of his bank balance and, were he to be in a relationship, whether he thinks he would receive or have to give more presents. This cynical and arcane science of his includes many calculations regarding Valentine’s Day, his and her forthcoming birthdays, Polish namedays and, of course, Christmas.

Mind you, many relationships break up over Christmas. Perhaps it’s the imminent new year or ruinous credit card bills that focuses hearts and minds. Whatever it is, after the hangovers, wound-licking and self-imposed exile that, for many, constitutes the month of January, by February there is an inordinately large number of people sending and hoping to perhaps receive a Valentine’s card or two.

Probably most Post readers grew up celebrating – or sometimes trying to avoid – Valentine’s Day. For sure, in the West, advertisers and marketers have long cherished the tradition, giving as it does a warm tingly feeling to otherwise grumpy post-Christmas sales figures. However, in its modern form at least, Valentine’s is a relatively recent addition to the Polish year.

Prior to the fall of Communism some twenty years ago, dewy-eyed Poles had nothing more romantic to look forward to on the socialist calendar than Women’s Day: a Communist invention celebrating the unflagging industry and tightly-knotted headscarves of the sturdy Slavic woman. This athletic archetype was usually portrayed, on posters, sleeves rolled up and with folded arms, rosy cheeks fresh from the fields and leaning nonchalantly against an unfeasibly large combine harvester, the size of which would have Lenin spinning with disbelief in his grave (that is, turning his body around very quickly, as opposed to spinning cloth, which had, prior to The Revolution, traditionally been arduous, low-paid work for an unmarried young woman (c.f. spinster), and was therefore an outmoded symbol of the bourgeoisie’s repression of the proloteriat).

In fact, it wasn’t until the fall of Communism in 1989 that Poles really took the Christian martyr Saint Valentine to heart, promoting him within the pantheon of Polish saints. Previously, he had languished, largely unnoticed, as the admired yet not much loved patron saint of epileptics and cholerics. Now, in his new romantic form, his story (whichever of the many versions is true) is celebrated in all the usual ways.

One of the most popular and international signs of affection is, of course, to give the object of your affection flowers, usually red roses. But be careful if the lucky woman is Polish: it is considered bad luck to proffer an even number of flowers in your bouquet. Actually, this presents something of a problem. (Western) tradition suggests twelve red roses for your true love. Well, twelve’s an even number, so that’s out. Thirteen? I don’t think so. So what about eleven? What! Risk the suspicion that you couldn’t help slipping number twelve to some rival for her affection along the way? Be careful, reader, for the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Along with the flowers must go, of course, The Card. Poles send Valentine’s cards just as other nations do, with younger people exchanging most and also specializing in the unsigned variety. Actually, I’ve always thought it strange that the time when most people send Valentine’s cards is during their teenage years, the years of puberty and raging hormones - precisely the time when parents are doing all they possibly can to make sure that any pubescent urges are not, repeat not, consummated.

For most of us, the later adult experience is – at best - a one-card reality: the expectation from both you and your partner that there will be one, and only one, card waiting on respective (or shared) doormats come the 14th. Any more, and there will be trouble. Laying out a handful of Valentines on the restaurant dinner table and asking for a sample of your girlfriend or wife’s handwriting, ‘just to be sure, kochanie’, is, in most cultures, frowned upon.

And especially in Poland, where the women are, well, Polish. An English-Polish male friend once shared with me the stereotype that Polish women were twice as feminine as those from many other cultures: in looks and in character, traits both positive and negative. Romantic, certainly: you only have to look at the number of long-stemmed roses proudly carried around on any one day by adoring girlfriends. But woe betide any boyfriend or husband who is found romantically-lacking this Valentine’s Day!

But what if you’re lacking more than a nice red nose? A partner, for example? Because, for some reason known only to yourself and half of Facebook, you find yourself single this Valentine’s Day. Available (merely awaiting the opening of your life’s next chapter) yet certainly not desperate (remembering just how life’s rich tapestry can easily tie you up in knots). What to do on the big day / night? Well, you could just treat it as any other day, whether that means crawling around the Rynek Glowny drunkenly on all-fours and crying for your mama (you know who you are) or whether it means finally finishing that matchstick model of the Wawel Castle, before retiring early with the BBC Shipping Forecast and a cup of hot chocolate.

Or you could always take a romantic break in Chelmno, in northern Poland, where a reliquary (allegedly) containing a part of Saint Valentine’s skull has been kept in a parish church for centuries. Apparently, the relic is famed to this day for its miraculous powers. Hopeful parishioners (some, no doubt, looking for a little Valentine’s magic) travel the whole country to kiss its silver container. OK, slapping your lips on a box with a bit of old bone inside in the hope of finding the love of your life is a bit of a long shot, but don’t knock it; it might be the only kiss you get this year!

Well, ok, perhaps things aren’t quite that bad. Maybe something less extreme is called for. Given the heightened sense of boy-girl excitement that hovers, Cupid-like, over February 14th, perhaps this is the night to finally banish those winter blues and finally start the new year with a bang. You arrive in the carefully-selected establishment of your choice and suddenly you see Mr or Miss Right (or, less romantically, Mr or Miss Right Now). It’s February 14th, it’s now or never. Take a deep breath, walk up boldly and – providing you’re not a Pole - impress them with your patchy yet amusing knowledge of Polish. S/he can only say ‘no’, right? But a quick word of warning to the green ex-pat: ‘no’, as well as ‘tak’, can in Polish sometimes mean ‘yes’, depending on the situation and your standard of personal hygiene, neither of which I can actually help you with.

Please note that John Marshall takes no responsibility for relationships either begun or broken as a result of the advice contained in this article. However, he would be quite pleased if you happened to name your first-born son ‘John’.