Valentine’s Day is a day many have marked on their calendar to celebrate love. It is celebrated annually on February 14 with cards, romantic texts, bouquets, and chocolate.
Today, Ghana will join the world to mark this great feast of love. In so doing, many activities were year-marked to celebrate the occasion.
In the late 1990s, when commercial radio was beginning to establish itself as a dominant cultural force in the country, disc jockeys (DJs) and entertainment broadcasters saw an opening on Valentine’s Day for spreading some joy and making money.
Ghanaians embraced the idea and literally painted the country red every Valentine’s Day, with dire consequences for any man who failed to do the needful on that day.
On Valentine’s Day, people normally head to beaches, hotels, nightclubs, romantic events, and the like. Indeed, churches even set up special events to keep their youth on the narrow path.
At some point in the history of Valentine’s Day, chocolates became a major feature, leading people to question the connection between the two.
Different theories about Valentine’s Day and chocolates surfaced; generally, it’s believed that Cadburys, the British chocolate-making family, first exploited the connection and made the first heart-shaped chocolates that are now so popular during the celebration.
Since the Middle Ages, chocolate has been considered an aphrodisiac. It was not long before a marketing genius saw the Ghana-specific context in the Valentine’s Day story.
At the heart of the celebration, the late Jake Obetsebi Lamptey, a public relations guru who was the Minister of Tourism and Diasporan Relations in the Kufuor Administration, saw the potential of Vals Day as an opportunity to market Ghana’s chocolates to the world.
In 2007, Mr. Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, with the active support of Mr. Isaac Osei, who was the Chief Executive Officer of Ghana COCOBOD, introduced the notion of celebrating February 14 as National Chocolate Day.
The idea was to build on the coincidence of chocolate and February 14 to project Ghana as a major chocolate country and for the day to get Ghana on the map while raking in revenue for the government.
For most of the 20th and 21st centuries, Ghana has been one of the two largest producers of cocoa. However, the country does not even register on the radar of chocolate producers and consumers.
Thus, it was that on Valentine’s Day 2007, Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey presented chocolates and other cocoa products to the Osu Children’s Home as the first official act in the celebration of the first-ever National Chocolate Day.
Coinciding with the Valentine Day celebrations, Ghanaians now demonstrate love by gifting chocolate to loved ones.
Since 2007, Ghana has stamped the idea of a national chocolate day on the public mind, but by and large, most people continue to observe the day as Valentine’s Day, albeit with chocolate as a major factor.
Source: Ghana/MaxTV/MaxFM/max.com.gh/Joyceline Natally Cudjoe
