The February 17, 1923 edition of the Town Crier had this to say about Valentine’s Day:

Ash Wednesday, St. Valentine’s day and the worst snow storm of the year form a rather unusual combination for this section. Over the phone comes the information that the storm was due, as it is seven years since the last one, which set the high mark for all time evidently in quantity and quality. Perhaps there is something in the cycle theory – not to mention groundhog superstition!

As for the first day of Lent and St. Valentine’s day falling on the same date, they were both celebrated by the ancients as the harbingers of Spring: Lent, in the Saxon language signifying Spring, and choosing one’s mate on February 14, by the primitive custom of drawing the names of young women from boxes by the men, being a sport practiced in the houses of the gentry of England as far back as 1476…

It is easier to adjust oneself of the paradox of a fast day falling on the day of entwined hearts than to contemplate the stopping of all traffic on account of storm. No street-cars. People walking down the hills in the middle of the road – for that is what it was for all intents and purposes. The dull wall of the fog-horns came up from the bay and from that direction came also a wind that carved the icicles, hanging from the eaves on the house across the way, into the shape of stockings with the toes pointed sharply to the east.

The quiet enveloped one softly as the dawn. It was a day to sit comfortably at home, to put fresh logs on the fire and to cut the leaves of a new book…

Happy Valentine’s Day. May you be sitting comfortably at home, entwined with love. May the snowpocalpyse of 2019 soon be a quiet memory!