#loveshack — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

(Roughly) Daily @[email protected] · 2026-02-14 · 09:00 UTC

“Valentine’s Day is a gentle reminder that Christmas decorations must come down”*…

A Norwegian Valentine’s Day card from 1912 depicting Cupid (source)

Today is, of course, Valentine’s Day– a celebration overseen by Cupid. Jacqueline Mansky explains how that rascally cherub has been part of Valentine’s Day lore since Chaucer’s time…

Despite a long list of Valentines and Valentinas that included emperors, martyrs-turned-saints, and a pope, there is no evidence that Saint Valentine’s Day as a holiday about love existed before Chaucer’s time. But as soon as it was, Cupid was part of it.
As the late University of Kansas English professor Jack B. Oruch wrote in “St. Valentine, Chaucer, and Spring in February,” it was the English literary giant and a circle of contemporaries, including John Gower, Oton de Grandson, and John Lydgate, who, building on the courtly love tradition, were the original “mythmaker[s]”of Valentine’s Day as a holiday focused on love and fertility. Cupid’s association with the day was present from the start, says Oruch. “At the time of Chaucer’s death in 1400, the transformation of Valentine into an auxiliary or parallel to Cupid as sponsor of lovers was well under way.”
But Cupid’s image did not stay the same in Valentine’s lore. By the mid-1800s, Cupid was looking less literary and more marketable.
As Leigh Eric Schmidt, a professor of religion and politics at Washington University in St. Louis, writes in “The Fashioning of a Modern Holiday: St. Valentine’s Day, 1840-1870,” Americans in the mid 1800s repurposed the holiday, and Cupid’s image shifted. Valentine’s Day had such a hold over the public, Schmidt writes, that it amounted to a “mania, craze, rage, or epidemic—a ‘social disease’ that seemed to recrudesce annually with ever heightening interest and anticipation.”
Naturally, Schmidt writes, merchants were eager to capitalize on this phenomenon even more by bringing children into the fold, so they created “lines of ‘juvenile valentines’.” Cupid came to have a new visual. Middle-class Americans of the nineteenth century had a “sentimental devotion to the child,” Schmidt writes, so the “piety of the angelic youngster” was reflected in a wide range of Valentine’s Day cards. The repackaging, Schmidt contends, was “very much a new image for the holiday”:
A refashioned image of Cupid as an innocent cherub indicated a redirection toward children and familial devotion. Merchants helped create a darling infant Cupid who bore only a faint resemblance to the often capricious Roman Cupid, who was said, among other things, to have sharpened his arrows on a grindstone whetted with blood.
Cupid’s image continues to be repurposed to this day in the pursuit of profit. Take the 2001 slasher flick Valentine. As film theorist and historian Richard Nowell writes in his essay “‘There’s More Than One Way to Lose Your Heart’: The American Film Industry, Early Teen Slasher Films, and Female Youth Author(s),” Cupid was reimagined as a “cherub-masked killer” to target teenage girls and young women, America’s “second-largest theatergoing demographic.” Clearly no longer playing for the children in the room, the trailer asks: “Why is it that the one day of the year that everyone’s afraid to be alone is Valentine’s Day?” The answer, Nowell writes, is the film’s tagline: “Love Hurts.”
It’s certainly a stretch from where Chaucer started with springtime and lovers, but considering that planned Valentine’s Day sales in the U.S. are expected to rake in approximately $27.4 billion this year—an increase of $6.7 billion since 2019—unless we collectively agree to quit celebrating Valentine’s Day, it’s a sure bet there’s more of this waiting in the, well, wings…

“Why Cupid Rules Valentine’s Day,” from @jstordaily.bsky.social.

* anonymous

###

As we celebrate, we might recall that it was on this date in 1977 that The B-52s performed their first live show at a Valentine’s Day party in their hometown of Athens, Georgia.

https://youtu.be/KCRU0WgexuI?si=yk1lTiIErpIsTTXA

#B52s #Chaucer #culture #cupid #history #LoveShack #music #rock #StValentine #ValentinesDay

#b52s #chaucer #culture #cupid #history #loveshack

(Roughly) Daily @[email protected] · 2026-02-14 · 09:00 UTC

“Valentine’s Day is a gentle reminder that Christmas decorations must come down”*…

A Norwegian Valentine’s Day card from 1912 depicting Cupid (source)

Today is, of course, Valentine’s Day– a celebration overseen by Cupid. Jacqueline Mansky explains how that rascally cherub has been part of Valentine’s Day lore since Chaucer’s time…

Despite a long list of Valentines and Valentinas that included emperors, martyrs-turned-saints, and a pope, there is no evidence that Saint Valentine’s Day as a holiday about love existed before Chaucer’s time. But as soon as it was, Cupid was part of it.
As the late University of Kansas English professor Jack B. Oruch wrote in “St. Valentine, Chaucer, and Spring in February,” it was the English literary giant and a circle of contemporaries, including John Gower, Oton de Grandson, and John Lydgate, who, building on the courtly love tradition, were the original “mythmaker[s]”of Valentine’s Day as a holiday focused on love and fertility. Cupid’s association with the day was present from the start, says Oruch. “At the time of Chaucer’s death in 1400, the transformation of Valentine into an auxiliary or parallel to Cupid as sponsor of lovers was well under way.”
But Cupid’s image did not stay the same in Valentine’s lore. By the mid-1800s, Cupid was looking less literary and more marketable.
As Leigh Eric Schmidt, a professor of religion and politics at Washington University in St. Louis, writes in “The Fashioning of a Modern Holiday: St. Valentine’s Day, 1840-1870,” Americans in the mid 1800s repurposed the holiday, and Cupid’s image shifted. Valentine’s Day had such a hold over the public, Schmidt writes, that it amounted to a “mania, craze, rage, or epidemic—a ‘social disease’ that seemed to recrudesce annually with ever heightening interest and anticipation.”
Naturally, Schmidt writes, merchants were eager to capitalize on this phenomenon even more by bringing children into the fold, so they created “lines of ‘juvenile valentines’.” Cupid came to have a new visual. Middle-class Americans of the nineteenth century had a “sentimental devotion to the child,” Schmidt writes, so the “piety of the angelic youngster” was reflected in a wide range of Valentine’s Day cards. The repackaging, Schmidt contends, was “very much a new image for the holiday”:
A refashioned image of Cupid as an innocent cherub indicated a redirection toward children and familial devotion. Merchants helped create a darling infant Cupid who bore only a faint resemblance to the often capricious Roman Cupid, who was said, among other things, to have sharpened his arrows on a grindstone whetted with blood.
Cupid’s image continues to be repurposed to this day in the pursuit of profit. Take the 2001 slasher flick Valentine. As film theorist and historian Richard Nowell writes in his essay “‘There’s More Than One Way to Lose Your Heart’: The American Film Industry, Early Teen Slasher Films, and Female Youth Author(s),” Cupid was reimagined as a “cherub-masked killer” to target teenage girls and young women, America’s “second-largest theatergoing demographic.” Clearly no longer playing for the children in the room, the trailer asks: “Why is it that the one day of the year that everyone’s afraid to be alone is Valentine’s Day?” The answer, Nowell writes, is the film’s tagline: “Love Hurts.”
It’s certainly a stretch from where Chaucer started with springtime and lovers, but considering that planned Valentine’s Day sales in the U.S. are expected to rake in approximately $27.4 billion this year—an increase of $6.7 billion since 2019—unless we collectively agree to quit celebrating Valentine’s Day, it’s a sure bet there’s more of this waiting in the, well, wings…

“Why Cupid Rules Valentine’s Day,” from @jstordaily.bsky.social.

* anonymous

###

As we celebrate, we might recall that it was on this date in 1977 that The B-52s performed their first live show at a Valentine’s Day party in their hometown of Athens, Georgia.

https://youtu.be/KCRU0WgexuI?si=yk1lTiIErpIsTTXA

#B52s #Chaucer #culture #cupid #history #LoveShack #music #rock #StValentine #ValentinesDay

#b52s #chaucer #culture #cupid #history #loveshack

ConnectionWithWonder @[email protected] · 2025-10-26 · 19:50 UTC

Me hosting the #storytelling event this afternoon!
#eastLondon #hackney #loveshack

#storytelling #eastlondon #hackney #loveshack

Hunky McMonkey @[email protected] · 2025-06-10 · 04:20 UTC

OMG, LOOK at these amazing pics of #CindyWilson and #KatePierson in like 1978----- Along with Ricky
https://vintagenewsdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/cindy-wilson-kate-pierson-2.jpg
#s #cindywilson #fredschneider #katepierson #rickywilson #keithstrickland #newwave #rocklobster #postpunk #smusic #vinyl #wildplanet #vinylcollection #loveshack #dancerock #planetclaire #privateidaho #newwavemusic #music #vinylcollector #rock #punk #recordcollection #sband #vinylcommunity #sofficial #chrisblackwell #vinyljunkie

#cindywilson #katepierson #s #fredschneider #rickywilson #keithstrickland

Hunky McMonkey @[email protected] · 2025-06-10 · 04:20 UTC

OMG, LOOK at these amazing pics of #CindyWilson and #KatePierson in like 1978----- Along with Ricky
https://vintagenewsdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/cindy-wilson-kate-pierson-2.jpg
#s #cindywilson #fredschneider #katepierson #rickywilson #keithstrickland #newwave #rocklobster #postpunk #smusic #vinyl #wildplanet #vinylcollection #loveshack #dancerock #planetclaire #privateidaho #newwavemusic #music #vinylcollector #rock #punk #recordcollection #sband #vinylcommunity #sofficial #chrisblackwell #vinyljunkie

#cindywilson #katepierson #s #fredschneider #rickywilson #keithstrickland

Hunky McMonkey @[email protected] · 2025-06-10 · 04:20 UTC

OMG, LOOK at these amazing pics of #CindyWilson and #KatePierson in like 1978----- Along with Ricky
https://vintagenewsdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/cindy-wilson-kate-pierson-2.jpg
#s #cindywilson #fredschneider #katepierson #rickywilson #keithstrickland #newwave #rocklobster #postpunk #smusic #vinyl #wildplanet #vinylcollection #loveshack #dancerock #planetclaire #privateidaho #newwavemusic #music #vinylcollector #rock #punk #recordcollection #sband #vinylcommunity #sofficial #chrisblackwell #vinyljunkie

#vinyljunkie #chrisblackwell #sofficial #vinylcommunity #sband #recordcollection

Mariaje Pérez @[email protected] · 2025-05-04 · 14:50 UTC

Happy to live in the same timeline as Simon Bates playing this banger on the radio 😎:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SOryJvTAGs

#theb52s #loveshack #1990s

ConnectionWithWonder @[email protected] · 2025-03-03 · 17:15 UTC

Storytelling Sunday residency in Hackney continues this month with a session themed on Haunted Dolls.
It will be spooky but cosy. Plus you get to make a free badge :)
Tickets £6.66 get them here https://www.connectionwithwonder.com/calendar #storytelling #loveshack #connection #stories #haunted #london

#storytelling #loveshack #connection #stories #haunted #london

FediThing :progress_pride: @[email protected] · 2024-01-12 · 21:18 UTC

Anyone remember this mashup? It is brilliant:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viuGhdeLXHo

(This was made in 2006, the tiktok version didn't invent it.)

#B52s #BritneySpears #LoveShack #Toxic #Mashup #Mashups

#b52s #britneyspears #loveshack #toxic #mashup #mashups

Jenny @[email protected] · 2023-09-25 · 18:27 UTC

@Long_live_rock_n_roll For me, its a tie between Love Shack (B-52s) and Two Princes (Spin Doctors)

#LoveShack #B52s #TwoPrinces #SpinDoctors

#loveshack #b52s #twoprinces #spindoctors

MDMRN @[email protected] · 2023-09-25 · 12:07 UTC

Happy #MusicMonday!

There's a little old place where we can get together. A Love Shack!

Most of the island was down to participate in this shoot. Even Walt got into it trying to match #RuPaul's iconic moves from the #MusicVideo.

----

I knew I was never get the walls perfect, so I kept with the music video's diner-esque vibes. I think it is still recognizable as resembling the music video, though.

Let me know your thoughts?

----

🏷 Tags: #Music #MusicVideo #B52s #LoveShack #ACNH #ACNHScreenshots #ACNHScenes #AnimalCrossing #VideoGames #NewWave #Nintendo #NintendoSwitch #ACNHCommunity #あつもり #あつ森 #CozyGames #CozyGamer #CozyGaming #TheB52s

#rupaul #musicvideo #music #b52s #loveshack #acnh

Jenny @[email protected] · 2023-09-21 · 03:19 UTC

@seth73 If you see a faded sign at the side of the road that says 15 miles to the LOOOOVE SHAAAACK…
The sign is wrong, you’ll need to go 3 more miles, turn left at the stoplight, then head west for about 7.5 miles. Hang a right at the green house with the flagpole, then take a left at the 2nd dirt road (not the 1st one, that dead ends at the quarry). Veer right at the blue mailbox….no wait, they painted it brown last year, but you can’t miss it…

#OopsASong #LoveShack #HashTagGames

#oopsasong #loveshack #hashtaggames

Senator Paula Simons🇨🇦 @[email protected] · 2023-07-08 · 13:51 UTC

@skribe Now I’m dancing around the house! https://youtu.be/9SOryJvTAGs #LoveShack #B52s

#loveshack #b52s

Hippie Scuba Steve @[email protected] · 2023-06-03 · 01:14 UTC

Love Donuts #LoveShack

#DonutASongBookOrShow
#HashtagGames
#HashItOut

#loveshack #donutasongbookorshow #hashtaggames #hashitout

knizer @[email protected] · 2023-03-19 · 03:07 UTC

@charliejane I selected a road trip playlist for a long drive with my beloved, with all the Millennial sing-a-long jams.
S: I wonder if this playlist has that, you know, that really catchy one, by, uh, the B-52s.
J: probably? But which one?
S: “Sex Cabin”.
J: …

Reader, I married her. #LoveShack

#loveshack

Jenny @[email protected] · 2023-03-09 · 04:54 UTC

Can’t Buy Me a Love Shack

(in THIS economy?!)

#MergeTwoSongsIntoOne #HashTagGames #CantBuyMeLove #Beatles #LoveShack #B52s @hashtaggames