Click below to listen to my 2 min. Garden Bite radio show/podcast: Valentines Day traditions around the World
Be with someone you love, do something you love, eat something you love, grow something you love!
In the meantime I’ll share some Valentine traditions around the world. In Denmark people traditionally exchange pressed white flowers called snowdrops instead of fresh bouquets. It’s also traditional for people to send their crushes “joke letters” called gaekkebrev. These poems or rhymes are signed only with dots, so the recipient has to guess who sent it. If they guess correctly, the sender will owe them a chocolate Easter egg later in the spring.
In South Korea and Japan, the men get spoiled on this day, the women get their turn on March 14th. In Japan specifically, chocolate is a must for all the men in your life including coworkers.
In Germany, chocolate pigs are a must! The pig represents both luck and lust. It’s traditional to exchange pig-themed gifts with the one you love, chocolate or not. Germans also celebrate Valentine’s Day with a much tastier version of those “conversation heart” candies: big, heart-shaped ginger cookies with messages written on them. I like that idea!
You would think France’s tradition would be romantic. However, back in the day, France would hold a matchmaking lottery, “un loterie d’amour’, where men and women would shout to each other from houses across the street and then pair off. Men had the option of ditching their date for another if they weren’t feeling it, and the leftover women would get together, burn pictures of the lovers who spurned them and vent their anger around a bonfire. Eventually, the French government had to ban the event.
Oddly (she says with tongue in cheek) there are not images of the un loterie d’amour! Instead you can put a love lock at Square du Vert-Galant, Paris.
