Valentine’s Day Is Good Time to Give Your Love
Like most holidays, St. Valentine’s Day is a mix of the sacred, the secular and the salable.
The church calendar celebrates Feb. 14 as a feast day for St. Valentine. Contrary to the Western custom of celebrating an honored person’s birthday, feast days always celebrate the day the saint died or was taken to heaven. On this day in 269, the Roman priest and physician Valentine was martyred by Emperor Claudius II Gothicus during his persecution of Christians.
This date of death almost coincided with the Roman feast of Lupercalia, when young men chose by lot young women they would court the next year. And why was this day chosen? Traditionally, it marked the beginning of mating season of birds! Thus the link between the selfless love of a martyr and romantic love was made. The holiday was a marriage of the two ideals.
By the 14th century, the religious celebration had been overshadowed by more commercial customs. For instance, in England the names of all the girls in a community were drawn and each was given a present.
By 1667--after the secret of papermaking leaked out of China--the idea of sending cards made of paper and lace became popular in England. These first valentines were handmade, and suitors composed their own verses. Valentines are much older than Christmas cards. The first known example of a Christmas card appeared in the 1840s, and the verses were preprinted.
When I was 8, I experienced the card-making custom in a special, unforgettable way. My mother dropped me off at my grandmother’s house because grandmother had invited me over to make valentines. While I finished my kettle tea and cinnamon heart cookies, she had assembled lace, glue, ribbon, construction paper, fancy doilies, scissors, crayons and cut-out pictures. I think she was recalling the times when she was a little girl, and had enjoyed the creativity and expression of sending her own unique greetings.
I set to work, happily coloring, cutting, and pasting. I made a valentine for the mailman, choosing a picture of snow-covered mailboxes. I made a valentine for my music teacher, including a picture of a quartet singing under a lamppost. I made a valentine for my Sunday school teacher featuring an elaborately dressed angel. Wait a minute! I recognized these pictures. They were from Christmas cards.
“Oh, the cards were so pretty this year, I just couldn’t bear to throw them away,” murmured my grandmother. “I thought they’d make such pretty valentines.”
Convinced that this would really work, I went on to make valentines for all my special friends and classmates. The recipients were mostly kind--if not skeptical--in their comments, saying they had never gotten an individually handmade valentine quite like that before. And I have to admit, while the other years’ celebrations are a blur, I will never forget the year we incorporated Christmas cards into valentine greetings.
I don’t think my grandmother was trying to make a theological statement. I think she just didn’t want to see pretty pictures go to waste; she was from the generation that lived through the Great Depression. But linking Christmas and St. Valentine’s Day like she did left an indelible impression on me, that granddaughter who later chose a ministerial career.
At Christmas we celebrate the unconditional love of God revealed through Jesus’ birth. This was a quality of love the world had never seen: God becoming man. Jesus more fully expressed this solidarity and love for mankind through a sacrificial love where he chose to lay down his life. He emphasized that giving up his life was a choice as recorded in John 10:18: “No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.”
Just as the birth of Jesus was God’s love gift to us, Jesus said his death was a love gift also. As Clement of Alexandria emphasized: “Martyrdom is fullness, not because it finishes a human life, but because it brings love to the fullest point.”
The apostle Paul also appreciated this full revelation of love when he wrote--Romans 5:7-8--that “Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Jesus was a martyr. As such, he embodies the spirit of martyrdom that is a celebration of his new community and its revolutionary values. The purpose of the martyr’s death is the affirmation of the ideals for which the life was given.
This St. Valentine’s Day, as my husband and I mark our 25th wedding anniversary, I will savor my chocolate candy and delight in my beautiful flowers. But I will also remember that love--unlike candy, flowers and cards--is not a commodity. It cannot be bought, traded, or bartered, only freely given. There are endless ways of giving love. In the name of St. Valentine, choose one, and let this be a day where true love abounds.
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On Faith is a forum for Orange County clergy and others to offer their views on religious topics of general interest. Submissions, which will be published at the discretion of The Times and are subject to editing, should be delivered to Orange County religion page editor Jack Robinson.