Things To Do On V-Day In Beantown

Often in the sunny yet chilly weeks of early February, amidst the effluvium of conversation which surrounds one when walking the street or dining out, you may hear many irritated yet resigned comments upon approaching Valentine’s Day —those hearts who lack a significant other plan to spend the day getting drunk with their televisions or belittling the happiness of others. For some, the annual commemoration of l’amour is something to be weathered, not enjoyed. The nature of Valentine’s Day makes it the most marketable holiday after the Christmas/Hanukkah revelry of late December, and every store front from CVS to the home page of Yahoo is overgrown with roses and chocolates, perfume and lingerie, making Feb. 14 impossible to ignore. It can hardly be expected that every consumer be in a relationship worth honoring in the name of the patron saint of epilepsy (who was beaten and beheaded, interestingly, in the year 269), but its omnipresence in advertisement and promotion seems to compel every citizen to acknowledge the day’s assigned significance.

Of course, in a culture where sex and fashion are greeted with more laud than love and compassion, condoms, vibrators and birth control pills might be more appropriate decorations for the local store window. But since over 50 percent of marriages end in divorce, and pre-nuptial agreements are almost as much of an institution as matrimony, it is fitting that what are traditionally the symbols of everlasting romantic love have become merely the trappings of a commercial spending obligation parading as joyful holiday.

But like many holidays, the attitude toward Valentine’s Day has changed with each culture and time period that celebrates it. Evolving from an Ancient Roman holiday in celebration of the mother of Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome (she was a wolf), the Church eventually assimilated the day into its Sacred Calendar. Just a couple hundred years ago, most European Valentine’s traditions were more superstitious than capitalistic. Women in England would eat hard-boiled eggs with salt and place green leaves under their pillows to help them dream of their intended. German women planted onions named after men, placed them near the fire and watched for the first onion to sprout — it would bear the name of their future husband. The elders of certain French villages would make pairs from a list of local young eligible people; couples pleased by their officially proclaimed significant other would feast and dance. Men sometimes rejected their match, however; the abandoned woman would remain in solitude for eight days, then join other slighted women in shouting curses at the men who had rejected them while burning their effigies in a huge bonfire.

While you are certainly free to eat salty hard-boiled eggs or burn effigies instead of throwing your money away on plastic roses made in China or Indonesia, there are a few other events in Boston on Valentine’s Day that you might see fit to participate in.

At 5:15, 7:30, and 9:45 pm on Valentine’s Day, the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge continues it tradition of showing what is considered to be one of the greatest and most romantic movies of all time, “Casablanca.” The 1942 feature with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman is a fixture of American culture. As the Brattle’s website says, while many people have popped the question in the theater’s balcony during the film, even Bogie doesn’t get the girl in the end. (www.brattlefilm.org)

The Coolidge Corner Theater in Brookline starts Queer-O-Rama, a ten-day festival on Valentine’s Day. A collection of modern gay and lesbian Cinema, it will include “Iris,” based on the life of bi-sexual British author Iris Murdoch and staring Kate Winslet and Dame Judi Dench; comedian Margaret Cho’s “I’m The One That I Want,” a movie of a performance of her one woman stand-up show; and David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive.” Many of the other movies, such as “O Fantasmia With Doors Cut Down,” are touted as containing explicit sex and bondage; “Girls Who Like Girls” collects noteworthy lesbian lovemaking scenes from the ’60s and ’70s. The opening night of Iris on the 14th is a benefit for the Provincetown Film Society and costs $10, or $25 to also attend the dessert and champagne reception; all other films are $8 ($5 for Coolidge Corner members). (www.coolidge.org)

If one chooses to attend the 7:30 pm BU Men’s Basketball game against Northeastern on the 14th at Case, you can watch the second annual MTV’s Singled Out contest at BU, where a group of men will presumably compete for the opportunity to win a date with a BU Lacrosse player. The lucky pair will receive a free dinner and movie passes for two (it is always heart-warming to see the country’s insatiable appetites for competition, sex and mass entertainment intertwined in a ménage à trois of love-drunk, blurry-eyed nymphomania).