¡Te quiero! Je t’aime! わたしは、あなたを愛しています! Eu amo Você! 我爱你！я тебя люблю! Mahal kita! Σε αγαπώ! Ich liebe dich! Szeretlek! Dwi’n dy garu di! I love you!
This week and especially this past Sunday, we have seen love and romance take center stage in the western world with the celebration of Valentine’s Day, a holiday where love is expressed and expected in various ways, forms and styles. Boyfriends, girlfriends, spouses and significant others gathered, embraced and fell back in love over fancy dinners, expensive gifts and planned out dates. However, all around the world, there are other holidays, festivals and celebrations in which different cultures express their romantic and platonic love for one another that many westerners might find taboo or just plain interesting like I do! Here are just four examples of the numerous traditions of love languages around the world:
- Brazil’s “Dia dos Namorados”
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Translated into English as “Lover’s Day,” “Day of the Enamored” or “Boyfriends’/Girlfriends’ Day,” this Brazilian holiday is much like the Valentine’s Day we know and love in our western culture, but it is celebrated on June 12! “Dia dos Namorados” is a summer celebration because of its proximity to a day dedicated to Saint Anthony, who, according to Brazilian Experience, is beloved by the Brazilian people for “blessing young couples with a prosperous marriage.” So much like in the United States and many parts of Europe, couples use this day to show their appreciation for the love of their lives through commercial items, dinners, flowers and chocolates, of course!
- China’s “Qi Xi Festival” or “The Double Seventh Night Festival”
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Next, we go to China, where we have another holiday or festival where love is celebrated outside of February and winter. On the seventh day of the seventh month on the Chinese lunar calendar (hence the name Double Seventh Night Festival), the country celebrates its own version of Valentine’s day each fall with a variety of traditions across the miles of Chinese territory dating back to the Han Dynasty. According to Huang, the festival is based on a 2,000-year-old fairytale where the goddess Zhi Nu, known for her weaving skills, fell in love with, married and had two children with Niu Lang, a mortal, human cow herder. Upon hearing this news, Zhi Nu’s mother, the queen mother of heaven, was enraged and forced her daughter back to heaven. After several attempts by the heartbroken couple to reunite, the Queen Mother of Heaven used her hairpin to create the Milky Way river of stars to further separate the lovers, but their cries found sympathy with the magpies, who formed a bridge for the couple to walk over these stars and meet once again. Eventually, the Queen Mother allowed them to meet one day of the year on Qi Xi, translated as the seventh night, hence the celebration date. Now every year, true love is celebrated throughout China with a wide variety of traditions, including women fetching water from the mountains in the Hunan Province and floating lanterns released in Taiwan.
- Wales’ “Saint Dwynwen Day”
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Meanwhile, in Wales, we have a day dedicated to another saint three weeks earlier on Jan. 25, Saint Dwynwen. As the Welsh equivalent of St. Valentine, she (yes, “she”) was alive in the fifth century and fell in love with a prince other than the man with which her father promised her to. Upset and heartbroken, she prayed to God that she forget him and was visited that night by an angel who gave her a potion that could erase the prince’s memory and turn him into a block of ice. Along with this, God gave St. Dwynwen three wishes, which she used to thaw her prince, to never marry and to wish that “God meets the hopes and dreams of true lovers.” With all three wishes fulfilled, she devoted her life to God and served him until her death in 465 AD. Now, Jan. 25 is a day dedicated to that final wish of St. Dwynwen, with hopes and dreams that each person’s own true love be fulfilled.
- Ghana’s “National Chocolate Day”
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Falling on Valentine’s Day, or Feb. 14, each year, the country of Ghana celebrates National Chocolate Day as a way of celebrating love while simultaneously stimulating their economy and driving tourism through their borders. Instituted in 2005, the holiday coincides with Valentine’s Day as a way of boosting the domestic consumption of Ghanese chocolate and other related products, so all in all, it is a win-win for everyone involved!