Skip to main content

St. Valentine's Day


The Holidays are behind us. Christmas and New Year's have been celebrated. Now we can get back to the busy rest of life, oh wait.. there are more holidays. Almost a week before Christmas, I went to my local Target store and beheld Valentine's Day decorations and gifts. Granted, it was but one shelf and the Xmas section was still going strong, but subconsciously I realized that the commercialism and marketing departments were already getting people ready for the next big holiday in the new year. They had the New Year's Eve section too, but Valentine's Day?!

The heart of the holydays or holiday (holie is another way to say holy) has been hindered by the commercialism. I know, I sound like broken record. At Christmas I took on the commercialism and now here again the subject returns. My contention is not really with people buying gifts or nice things for holidays, it is that there is no knowledge of the origin and true purpose of the actual day being celebrated. I remarked about Christmas how it is odd that no one notice that Christ's name is in the name of the holiday.

Moving forward to Valentine's Day. The origin and purpose of the holiday is both pagan and Christian. Originally the practice of giving chocolates and hearts was to honor Aphrodite the goddess of love, and to conjure Cupid, her servant who bespells people with arrows in the shape of hearts. Valentine's Day was a Greek festivity that got people in the mood to make love. The Greeks, as many believe today, thought chocolate is an aphrodisiac (interestingly has the name of Aphrodites in it) to make people primed hormonaly to want sex.

The actual name of the holiday, Valentine's did not come until later. The holiday was named as many are after a particular saint. In Rome, there was an emperor who declared marriage to be outlawed, because he believed his soldiers and citizens could be better able to fight if they had not fondness for each other. A Roman Catholic priest named Valentinus seeing young people in love and not following the decree, began to marry people in secret. Eventually, Valentinus was discovered and imprisoned, there he had correspondence of letters with young lovers and that is how we know the story is true. Valentinus was eventually executed for breaking the law. This is where Christian aspect of the holiday came in.


Thus Valentine's Day can be celebrated in two different ways. It can be practiced in the old pagan way of pervasion and promiscuousness which violates our Christian beliefs, or it can be pure and powerful love demonstrated through the commitment of lovers in marriage. Valentine's Day would actually make a great day to marry, because it would be in the spirit of St. Valentine's sacrifice to save love.

I do believe that it is sweet to send a card or something to someone you are keen or like. It can be a great icebreaker or a time to be idiotic and let your heart bear out to the one you love and risk rejection. It is a time when people's minds are on romance (old sense of the word) and the longing for companionship is starkly in the faces of those who are single. However, Valentine's need not be celebrated by only couples. A single person can delight in Jesus Christ and thank Him for the coming day when they shall meet that person to share the holiday with. Until then, singles can think on St. Valentine, who did not have lover or wife, but spent his Valentine's Day trying to bring lovers together in holy matrimony. Maybe the best way to celebrate Valentine's Day is to foster love in others, to show others plutonic love and brotherly love. And if like St. Valentine, you know people who "burn with passion for one another," then suggest that they commemorate the holiday's name sake and marry.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Potrait of Jesus: What Christ Looked Like

What was Jesus’s appearance? Pseudo-historians at National Geographic and other publications argue that Jesus’ humanity was of Arab or African descent. This is impossible because Jesus our God was Son of David according to His flesh, “He promised beforehand through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures, regarding His Son, who was a descendant of David according to the flesh, and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by His resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord (God),” (Romans 1:2-4), and King David was described as the following, “So he sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy [red, ruddy, from the word admowniy {ad-mo-nee'}; from 'adam ; reddish of the hair or the complexion red, ruddy], with beautiful eyes and a handsome appearance. And the LORD said, "Arise, anoint him; for this is he. So Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers, and from that day on the Spirit of the LORD came ...
4 comments
Read more

Dispensationalism

John Nelson Darby (1800-1882) was a man who did two things, he took 70th week of the Book of Daniel and stretched out to the End Times, and he was the father of  Dispensationalism , a belief system that God dispenses different peoples with separate blessings and covenants. According to Darb'ys doctrine of Dispensationalism, God dispenses different covenants. There are total of seven dispensations that divide the history of man: I. Dispensation of Innocence (prior to the Fall, "Do not east of the Fruit of Good and Eve, Eden), II. Dispensation of Conscience ( You must assuage guilt and sin with blood sacrifices.) III. Dispensation of Human Government (Multiply and Subdue the world, example the Tower of Babel Gen 11:1-9, and Genesis 1:28). IV. Dispensation of the Promise (Dwell in Canaan, Jerusalem) V. Dispensation of the Law ("Obey the Law of Moses and the Prophets"). VI. Dispensation of Grace (The Church, Jesus Christ has come...
Post a Comment
Read more

Orthodox Christianity and Messianic Judaism

There is a divide between the two sides of Christianity. One is lined by a rosary, the other with tallit (prayer shawl). In the west we tend to come from a Greco-Roman understanding of The Bible and Jesus Christ. We are saturated with images of the Crucifixion and see through the red lens of Calvary. Now The Messianic or Jewish perspective is becoming more prevalent as people begin to study the roots of the Christian faith. After all, Jesus was a Jew and his Twelve Disciples were all Jews of different sects and positions in society. By studying the Jewish roots of Jesus we come to understand the ancient customs, practices, rites, and traditions that are featured in the Old and New Testaments. We learn in Jewish tradition that a Rabbi had to be ordained by two rabbis and that when Jesus was asked, "by who's authority do you say these things?, (Luke 20:2)" the Pharisees were asking who had ordained Jesus and where he got his yoke (teachings), and Jesus responds, "wh...
Post a Comment
Read more