Valentine's Day

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. It is my favorite holiday. Why? Well, maybe because it celebrates love. Romantic love, to be sure, but it also celebrates that kind of love that is friendship. I also have a fondness for all the liitle things about Valentine's Day--the cards, the hearts, the chocolates, the red roses, the diamonds. I mean, what's not to like???

To be sure, it helps to have a sweetheart, someone to share that love with. The Valentine's Day after losing a sweetheart (whether to the carpiciousness of life or to the clutches of death) can be quite painful. I have been blessed to not have experienced that pain for many years. Maybe that is where the love of friends comes in.

Out of curiousity, I did some reading about the history of Valentine's Day, and it has quite a history. Not suprisingly, the SAINT in St Valentine's was an attempt to Christianize beloved customs that had a much older past. Nothing wrong with that, I guess, if you keep the universal theme of love in perspective. Perhaps the most charming story of Valentine's Day's origins was that once upon a time in the Roman world the powers that be decided that men made better soldiers if they were not married. Well, there was this subversive priest named Valentine who secretly married young lovers. He was inevitably found out, and thrown in jail. He befriended his jailer's daughter, and he sent her a letter signed "from your Valentine". Cool, huh? Especially since it has that whole friendship thing in there. At least, it would fit nicely with my mythology...if it was more than friendship...well...we know what happens to subversive priests who fool around with jailer's daughters. They don't live happily ever after. Who knows if the story is true, but it makes a nice story, regardless of the ending. Today, Valentine's Day has been hijacked by the same commercial interests that have hijacked Christmas, and Mother's Day, and Grandparent's Day. They didn't exactly hijack the last one, they created it, as though you couldn't honor your grandparents on their gender specific parental day. But back to Valentines--there was a time when people handmade their own. Many Sunday School classes still do. Maybe they are on to something.

One of my favorite Valentine's Days was the year that Micahel and I attended a performance of Romeo and Juliet put on by the Synetic Theatre, where everything is done in pantomine. This year, we are delaying the gratification of our theatre going desires to March 26, when we will go to see Synetic Theatre's new production of King Lear. Even if it isn't on the exact day, its our little celebration. We haven't gone to the theatre in several years. And anyway, after twenty years of marriage, what's another month?? While we're waiting we'll make do with something chocolate for dessert on the actual Valentine's Day. Maybe Michael will bring me flowers, he does things like that.

This Valentine's Day I hope you experience love, whether it's love with your sweetheart, or the love of your friends, or preferably both.