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St. Valentine's Day
Learn more about this popular holiday.
St. Valentine’s Day will be here soon. Are you ready? If you are one of those folks who waits to the last minute to purchase your Valentine's Day gifts you aren't alone! According to the folks at Hallmark, over fifty-percent of all Valentine’s Day gifts and cards are purchased less than a week prior to the holiday. So relax, my fellow procrastinators, we still have plenty of time to purchase something for that special person in our lives!
As far as holidays are concerned, St. Valentine’s Day usually goes by fairly unnoticed by the modern church. Like Groundhog Day and St. Patrick’s Day, St. Valentine’s Day is often viewed by Christians as just another secular holiday which you don’t get a day off work for. But it hasn’t always been this way. In fact, St. Valentine’s Day began as a religious celebration honoring the life of a dedicated Christian priest, named Valentine, who lived in Rome during the third century A.D.
According to legend, Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, so he outlawed marriage for young men — his crop of potential soldiers. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young couples in secret. When Valentine's actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death.
Some accounts say that Valentine actually sent the first "valentine card" himself. While in prison, it is believed that Valentine fell in love with a young girl — who may have been his jailor's daughter — who visited him during his confinement. Before his death, it is said that he wrote her a letter, which he signed "From your Valentine," an expression that is still in use today.
In the year 498 A.D., Pope Gelasius declared February 14th , the date of Valentine’s death, to be St. Valentine's Day. Over the years the story of Valentine’s life has become obscured by time, but not his commitment to love. And it is this commitment to love that connects Christians to the St. Valentine’s Day holiday.
Love, the unselfish benevolent concern for the good of another, is a central theme of our faith and rests at the heart of what it means to be a Christian. Mother Teresa once said, “The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.” Each of us is created with a need to be loved and to love another. Only when we care as much about someone else’s needs as our own can we truly say that we living as dedicated disciples of Jesus Christ.
Let love not only be a part of your Valentine’s Day celebration, but allow it be a part of all you say and do.