I have good news for those of you who get grouchy around the feast day of Valentine of Rome. Today, you have plenty of other saints from which to choose:
Abraham of Harran
Antoninus of Sorrento
Auxentius of Bithynia
Cyril
Maro
Methodius
Valentine of Terni
Vicente Vilar David
Today, tell someone "Happy Methodius' and Cyril's Day!" and celebrate the Cyrillic alphabet. If you know any Maronite Catholics, you might tell them, "Happy Feast of St. Maron!" I wish I had known about these alt-2/14 saints years ago when I lived in a house where everyone but I had a significant-someone with whom to celebrate Valentine's Day. One of my friends received heart-shaped toast with her breakfast. When I told another friend about the toast, she confessed that her partner had made heart-shaped tofu for breakfast. It was around that time I started a tradition of giving myself Valentine's Day presents. As much as I wanted to be immune to the commercialization of Valentine's Day, I was jealous of the rampant smoochiness around me.
I've gotten over it. Finding a boyfriend who liked me as much as I liked him helped. Marrying him helped even more. We've become flexible, too. Because of some scheduling conflicts, Bede is gaming with The Guys tonight instead of the usual Tuesday night. We're going out for our Valentine's Day dinner tomorrow night. Maybe the heart-shaped souffles and chocolate mousses will be 1/2 off by then. In the meantime, we've exchanged material tokens of mutual admiration and esteem.
Bede's present to me:
Photo from Spooky Boutique
My present to Bede:
Photo composite from Find My Brick
Finally, for a cheeky history of Valentine's Day, you need go no further than a blog post away: Galetea of Blogapotamus Rex has a few tidbits you might want to know about lottery-marriages and goat-hide fertility symbols.
5 comments:
I shall never succumb to the cynical media and commercial influence that has turned Valentine's Day into a money making scam day. It's all bullshit. In my life I have seen it grow from the giving of simple cards to lofty expectations and pressures. What we need to do is to show our love every day of the year - not just February 14th.
That's right, YP! And while we're at it, let's celebrate our birthday every day of the year. After all, we are reborn each day, yes?
:)
I refuse to let the free market ruin Valentine's Day. Alter-counter-culture (a movement I started and has yet to catch on) refuses to let the overblown expectations of others ruin good experiences. I enjoyed exchanging cards with everyone in my class, even the people I didn't get along with. I didn't like it when I got older and it turned into a popularity contest.
P.S. Thanks for stopping by to comment, YP! It's been a tumbleweed kind of day here at S & S.
Probably because everyone else is still stuck in traffic trying to get home to their valentines...
We were down with the flu - one of us, not me.
We have a St. Cyril and Methodius church here where my madrina's daughter attended school as a wee one and wore her little Bluebird uniform on Campfire days back when folks still erroneously thought Scouts were anti-Catholic, soo Catholic kids did Campfire.
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