Decorating a Valentine's Day Tree

Everyone is familiar with decorating a tree for Christmas. Now, with Valentine's Day just around the corner, you can still use your (typically) green or white artificial tree to brighten up a corner of your room or pot a dried branch in a container or vase suitable to hang ornaments on. Even decorating an outside tree or evergreen shrubbery is perfectly acceptable. Other parts of the home can also be decorated from stairway banisters, windows, mantels, and doorways. This is something children love to help with and it can be made into a tradition that may be continued each year by family members.

Some of the most common symbols for Valentine's Day are red hearts, red and pink bows, arrows, ribbons, lace, flowers, teddy bears, and a variety of candy. Small artificial doves can be purchased in craft shops and make a beautiful Valentine's Day Tree decoration as do small figurines of Cupid, the God of Love. Ornaments are sold in stores or you can make your own decorations; however, all of these items can be used to decorate your tree, using only a single design or several different designs.

Love notes can be written and tied to the tree with ribbons, along with Valentine cards received from family and friends. Candy cane hearts, chocolate kisses wrapped in lace or netting, and handmade ornaments can be used. Baking Valentine cookies in the shapes of hearts, birds, Cupid, and flowers can be fun for the kids, are edible, and still make great decorations. Pink, red, and white lights can also be used to decorate your tree, both inside and out. A color scheme, such as using only red and white colors or pink and white colors, works out well for Valentine's Day.

Cupid is probably the most famous of all Valentine symbols and is known as the Roman God of Love, and he was the son of Venus. In ancient Greece, he was known as Eros, the son of Aphrodite, who was the goddess of love. He is often portrayed today as a winged, chubby, naked child equipped with a bow and a quiver of arrows. By shooting couples in the heart with his arrows (and who often had little in common with each other); he wanted to make them fall in love to see how things would turn out for the couple. Both Eros and Cupid have been long been considered instrumental in matters of the heart and love.

Valentine's Day, like many of our other holidays, began as a pagan fertility celebration that was celebrated on February 15 and was called Lupercalia, in honor of the pastoral god Lupercus. It later became popular with the Romans, when males would draw names of females from an urn and that person would be their partner on Valentine's Day and when gifts would be exchanged.

Although there are many legends of how Valentine's Day originated as we know it today, it is most commonly believed that it was named after a priest, called Valentine, who married young couples even after marriage had been outlawed by Emperor Claudius II. Claudius II, who was attempting to gather soldiers, believed single men were better suited. Married soldiers or those who "fell in love" often did not want to go to war and fight or be gone for extended periods of time. When St. Valentine was discovered marrying these couples, he was to death, later being canonized as a martyr and became known as St. Valentine's, the saint for lovers.

Decorating a tree can be fun and a way to teach children about family and friends. It is a fun activity and a means to demonstrate that people are important to each other.

Sources:

Different symbols associated with love and Valentine's Day

The History and Meaning of Cupid, God of Love