The Happy Hugs Brigade having a party at the RAF Odiham Valentines Ball 2005

As we’re rapidly approaching Valentines Day, which as well as being the most romantic day of the year (allegedly!) it is also the busiest single day for our balloon-in-a-box deliveries, so we thought it might be interesting to find out a little more about where the tradition of Valentines Day came from.

It would appear that it all started back as early as the fourth century B.C. The Romans, as part of a young mans rite to passage to the God Lupercus, held a sort of Love Lottery. The names of all the teenage women were placed in a box and each adolescent man drew a name at random and was ‘assigned’ the woman as a companion for a year, after which another lottery was staged. Not the most romantic way to find a partner but it must have helped to avoid any awkward break-ups! After eight hundred years of this the early church fathers wanted to put a stop to a practice that they felt was very cruel so they sought an answer in Valentine, a bishop who had been martyred two hundred years earlier.

Apparently St. Valentine was a priest near Rome during the reign of Claudius-II who had issued an edit banning marriage. The Roman Empire was struggling from a lack of quality administrators and frequent civil strife and the Gauls, Slavs, Huns, Turks and Mongolians were increasing their pressure on the Empire’s boundaries. Claudius-II wanted to recruit the most able men as soldiers and officers and he felt that married men were too attached, emotionally, to their families and therefore made poor soldiers so in order to get the best recruits he banned marriage!

Valentine, who was a bishop at the time decided to help the traumatised young lovers by meeting them in a secret place and joining them in marriage. Of course Claudius-II was not happy about this when he found out what had been happening and promptly had Valentine arrested. Although Claudius-II gave Valentine a chance to avoid execution by offering him the choice of converting to the Roman Gods Valentine refused and Valentine was executed (there seems to be a bit of conflict from sources as to the date of the execution but most seem to believe it was on February 14th).

While Valentine was awaiting his execution his jailor – Asterius asked him to heal his blind daughter and apparently, through his faith, Valentine restored her sight. Just before he was executed he requested a pen and paper and left her a note that simply read ‘from your Valentine’.

Valentine later became a patron Saint and was made the spiritual overseer of an annual festival where young Romans offered woman that they admired handwritten notes of affection which bore Valentines name on February 14th. The Valentines Day card (or even balloon!) spread with the onset of Christianity and is now celebrated all over the world.

January 11th 2006, placing our order with Ling Cards for our Christmas cards for Christmas 2006! could it get any earlier!

In a moment of weakness I agreed to deliver a Balloon In A Box locally, for a customer who lives in France, on New Years Day. Like all the other gift delivery companies we were closed on New Years Day because the only possible way to deliver anything was to take it there ourselves, not to mention the fact that we fancied a day off! However, the delivery address was only ten minutes away by car and the only plans that Alison and I had made for New Years Day were to have a lazy day and recover from a little over indulgence the night before so it was no real difficulty to take a few minutes out of the day to deliver a balloon. The only flaw in my logic was that John (Alison's husband) had the only car in the household - and he was in Lancashire, with their daughter, visiting his mum.

It was considerably more that ten minutes away by foot, but I had agreed to do it and we didn’t want to let the customer down! So we decided to go for it - kill two birds with one stone and take Jade for a walk, clear our booze muddled brains and deliver the balloon. The fact that the address was opposite a very nice country pub called The Fox and Goose helped clinch the decision.

So we walked, and walked, and walked! Jade had a great time, but hindsight is such a wonderful thing, I think we may have been a little adventurous. The field we cut across was really really muddy and by the time we'd made it across it our boots felt like they weighed a tonne.

My head ached, my legs ached, I had blisters on my feet caused by the totally inappropriate footwear I chose for the trek, but we got the balloon there much to the delight of a lovely little boy who had just turned two years old. We popped into the pub, just for a rest of course, stared at a couple of Jack Daniels and Diet Cokes for a while then began the equally arduous return trip. But even though the walk felt a lot longer than it really was it certainly cleared the cobwebs and apart from the blisters I felt much better for it, and it was worth it to see the look on the birthday boy’s face. Now, where else could you buy a gift from and get it delivered on New Years Day? Don’t say we don’t go the extra mile (literally) for our customers

Welcome to 2006!

Cathy :)

A very festive house, in South Warnborough - Hampshire.