VervePress -- February 2010

February, the L-word month, is here to remind us that love is a many-splendored thing -- and a lightning rod for the glorious range of human emotions, to boot! Blissful love, unrequited love, love gone wrong, hard-won self love -- even self-protective non-love -- it's a loaded and endlessly fascinating topic! Head (and heart) hurt from contemplating the variations and implications? Then keep your V-Day emoting basic -- a funny ecard and a luscious box of chocolates for the one you love -- even if it's YOU!

New & Spotlighted Categories

Valentine's Day & Get Well -- Laughter's the Best Medicine and the Language of Love!

How ironic that high cold and flu season coincides with the smoochiest holiday of the year -- Valentine's Day! Since laughter is a known immune booster, mood lifter and aphrodisiac, harness the power of VERVE for the greater good this month with Get Well and Valentine's Day VerveCards!

A related aside -- Valentine's Day and Chinese New Year fall on the same day this year, which makes our Yin/Yang V-Day ecard the perfect hybrid greeting for ringing in the Year of the Tiger -- grrrrr! (And the Tiger also symbolizes the female Yin energy!)

Holiday Redux

Valentine's Day's Rowdy Roman Roots

Like Halloween and Christmas, Valentine's Day stems from more bad-assed pagan partying -- this time a young men's rite of passage in mid-February called Lupercalia. According to a National Geographic tell-all, the festivities involved naked man/boys whipping teen maidens with blood-soaked animal hides to ramp up their fertility, and a human lottery to determine young couplings for the coming year.

Unable to banish Lupercalia, the Church repackaged it as a Christian festival with decidedly tamer trappings. The lottery morphed into young men and women drawing saints names to emulate for the coming year, and the pagan god, Lupercus, was swapped out for a more suitable patron saint of love, St. Valentine.

Legend has it that St. Valentine was executed on February 14th, A.D. 270 for performing marriages on the sly, in defiance of a public ban. (Roman Emperor Claudius II had decided that married men made less committed soldiers, so he forbade marriage throughout his empire). While Valentine was imprisoned awaiting his execution, he fell in love with and miraculously cured the blind daughter of his jailer. His farewell message to her was signed "From Your Valentine," the classic V-Day sign-off we've all come to recognize.

Spreading VERVE to Those in Need

Haiti's Earthquake Victims -- VerveCards will continue donating 10% of all sales through 2/14/10, including Gift Memberships, to the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund via SavortheSuccess.com's fundraising effort. Thanks for helping us spread the word!

Bikeandbuild.org -- VerveCards designer, Angela Parrotta, will be leading a long-distance bike trip from New Hampshire to Vancouver this summer to raise money and awareness for affordable housing. To learn more about this worthwhile organization -- and help Angela meet her $4,000 goal by April 1st -- visit http://bikeandbuild.org/rider/3524. Thanks!

Women's Education Project -- Dharma Merchant Services, VerveCards' credit card processor, will donate 10% of 2009 gross profits from our account to our designated charity, Women's Education Project (womenseducationproject.org). WEP operates two centers in South India that prepare young women of limited means, but unlimited potential, for college and career success to improve their lives, families and communities.