Paris Romantic--but Not on Valentine’s Day

In this celebrated city of love and romance, one would have barely known that Thursday was St. Valentine’s Day.

A search for chocolate hearts and valentine cards proved futile. Florists reported only minor increases in sales of love buds. And on the banks of the Seine--a traditional playground for young couples--there were no more strollers than usual.

Even in Roquemaure, the town in southern France where St. Valentine’s remains are said to lie, only a handful of faithful gathered Thursday to pay tribute to the “patron saint of lovers.”

While in America, Britain and much of the rest of the world, St. Valentine’s Day is feted with roses, cards and candies, the French are more subdued in observing the day.

‘Paramount Importance’

In fact, the French marvel at the way Americans and the British glorify St. Valentine, the Roman priest murdered in AD 270. The Agence France-Presse news service noted with amazement that “St. Valentine’s Day takes on a national dimension of paramount importance” in the United States and Britain. More than 900 million valentines change hands each year in America, and 7 million cards were sent in Britain in 1982, the agency said.

“St. Valentine’s Day means much less here than it does in America,” said Bernard Grinfeld, a government official who keeps track of the French flower, fruit and vegetable industries. “Of course, we sell more roses on this day, but perhaps the French are less romantic than the Americans.

“But then again,” Grinfeld said, chuckling, “the French show these things in different ways.”

Helene Cloud, a saleswoman in a small boutique and newspaper stand near the Champs-Elysees, views the situation with Gallic realism. Asked if she sells many valentines, Cloud shrugged, saying, “It’s done less and less here. The French are no longer sentimental.”

Murky History

This subdued manner of celebrating St. Valentine’s Day is steeped both in France’s collective personality and the murky history of the holiday.

The tradition in France reaches back to the 17th Century, when young men and women for a single day were allowed to choose special companions, known as valentines.

In 19th-Century Germany, millions of valentine letters were sent each year. And the first commercial valentine greeting cards produced in the United States appeared in the 1840s.

Today, the French--often guarded and reserved in public--leave St. Valentine’s Day strictly to lovers and married couples. Since 1964, for example, the tiny village of St. Valentin in western France serves as a national meeting place each Feb. 14 for couples engaged to be married.

But while Paris was not awash in red this week, there were still signs that the French were giving a diffident nod to St. Valentine.

At La Maison du Chocolat, a luxurious Parisian chocolate shop near the Arch of Triumph, business was brisker than usual. Robert Linxe, owner of the shop, said that in his 30 years of chocolate-making, he had never seen so many customers on St. Valentine’s Day.

‘Lots of Americans’

“This is the first year we’ve been so busy,” he said, adding that “lots of Americans are stopping by.”

“Next year, we’ll make chocolates in the shape of hearts to please our customers,” Linxe said. But he admitted that he tried once before to sell heart-shaped chocolates, and “not a soul would touch them.”

In the United States, St. Valentine’s Day is a “celebration of friendship--for men and women, husbands and wives, teachers and students, employers and employees. Everyone gives and everyone receives,” he said.

But in France, the 54-year-old chocolatier said, the holiday is “exclusively for lovers.”

“I hope the French attitude is becoming more relaxed,” he said. “That may not mean more romance, but it will certainly mean more chocolate lovers.”