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What Valentine’s Day is really about

Lots of folks claim the pejorative that Valentine’s day is a sham. The go-to reason is that it’s a ploy by Hallmark to get people to buy cards in bulk, and that it’s a plot by the capitalist regime.

Others say that it is merely Single’s Awareness day, a day to make those without a better half feel left out. Maybe they haven’t looked into why we celebrate Valentine’s Day in the first place.

As many of you know, Valentine’s Day takes on the namesake of Saint Valentine, a Roman martyr of the third century A.D. Not a lot is known about the guy, except that he is associated with courtly love.

At the time, displays of affection we know of today were kept within the home – that is, in private – because the home built by two people was kept together solely because of the love they shared. St. Valentine made this known.

But he lived in a time when Christianity was illegal and people were persecuted for their faith, so his magnum opus was the record of secret marriages he oversaw during his missions around the Roman Empire.

He was caught eventually, and was prosecuted. Before his execution, he restored the sight and hearing of his jailer’s daughter out of respect of a fellow human being, and left behind a note signed “Your Valentine.”

But why, of all the other saints, do we make a relatively large deal of St. Valentine’s Day, even in the real world?

The answer’s quite interesting – the holiday of Valentine, as we know it, is due to the storytelling of the famous Geoffrey Chaucer.

In his collection “Parliament of Foules” that sentimental customs were what kept us civil; they’re what remind us of the bond we share as humans with emotions and desires.

So sure, people might appear to blow Valentine’s day out of proportion, making the rest of us gag or roll our eyes.

But think about it: why do we celebrate other holidays, even if they’re not exactly like they were when they started? We celebrate Halloween and April Fool’s day in the spirit of mischief.

We celebrate Earth Day in the spirit of conservation. So we celebrate Valentine’s Day not necessarily for love, but for appreciation of each other. Come on guys, we learned this in kindergarten. The whole class got valentines and candy, right?

We made goofy projects for our parents. Why? Because we were thankful for their being there for us. And in reality, we give our boyfriends silly little Beanie
Babies for the same reason we send our friends nerdy pick-up lines. They may be jokes, but they’re little tokens of recognition.

Thus, in reality, Valentine’s Day really is about showering those you love – however you love them – with sentiments to show how much they really mean to you. And no, you don’t have to restrict it to February 14th, either. But without Valentine’s Day, it would be quite difficult to remember to not take what we have – or who we have – for granted.

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