Valentine's Day is about feeling special

Valentine’s Day is about feeling special - making others feel special and experiencing the feeling of being special.

As a celebration of love, Valentine’s Day gained traction in medieval times.  Prior to the 14^th century, it was a feast day in honor of Saint Valentine.  Valentine was a priest who defied Emperor Claudius II’s edict that forbad young men to marry, until he was caught, condemned and executed. As the legend goes, he healed and fell in love with the daughter of one of the judges who had condemned him.  On the day of his execution he sent her a note and signed it “From your Valentine”.   The salutation, as we know, has become standard, and frequently expresses the romantic attachment between two people.

Today’s culture emphasizes the romantic aspect of the day, probably because romance translates into dollars.  Last year, Canadians spent a whopping $3.38 billion on jewellery, $6.38 billion on wine, and $70.9 million on flowers in honour of romantic love.

The National Retail Council estimates that this year total consumer spending for Valentine’s Day in the United States will reach $18.2 billion.  To be fair, some of that amount includes spending on gifts for children, parents, teachers, friends, co-workers, and pets. Still, lovers will spend, on average, over $85 on their significant other compared to about $27 on family members.  They will spend $4.3 billion on jewellery, $3.8 billion on an evening out, and $2 billion on flowers.

Spending aside, the rituals of Valentine’s Day, from candlelight dinners at tony restaurants to cupcakes with pink icing and cinnamon hearts shared in an elementary school classroom, express many different forms of love.

The English language is not very inventive when it comes to describing love.  We use the same word to describe the way we feel about all sorts of things. We might love to ski, our morning coffee, the movie we watched last night, or a special outfit.  We love our pets.  We love our spouse, children, parents and friends. 

The ancient Greeks were more sophisticated when it came to describing emotional attachment. They spoke about six forms of love.  

• Eros expressed passion or intense desire. It was the fire within, and like a fire, eros could get out of control and become destructive. 
• The concept of philia included friendship, appreciation of others, as well as loyalty to family, community and even the workplace. 
• Storge referred to the love between children and parents. Unlike eros and philia that depended on an individual’s personal qualities, storge arose from feelings of dependency.  
• Ludus could be the affection between young children, puppy love, or flirtatiousness. Ludus relationships were playful, casual and uncomplicated. 
• Agape referred to the love of God for man and of man for God.  Agape was selfless and encompassed all humanity.  
• Pragma described the mature love found in successful marriages. Where eros expressed the feeling of falling madly in love, pragma reflected the will and commitment required to maintain a loving relationship for the long haul. 
• Philautia described love of self.  Like eros, philautia could be good, as in having healthy self-esteem and treating one’s self with kindness, or bad, as in being narcissistic. 

Valentine’s Day gives us a chance to celebrate the critical human experience of loving and of being loved across the spectrum of these various types of emotional attachments.

The simple acts of loving kindness that we enact on Valentine’s Day can move passion towards a mature and life-giving relationship, express friendship, enhance family bonds, communicate our concern for others, and nurture a sense of self-worth.  In an otherwise ho-hum, often dreary month, Valentine’s Day rituals brighten the landscape of the heart. 

My appreciation of Valentine’s Day has remained undiminished over the years. While never a big spender on the day, I like to mark it in some way.  It’s a playful, light-hearted way to celebrate something that is of great importance - the beauty of relationship and the uniqueness of the individual.

Valentine’s Day celebrates our ability to love. While we may not have the vocabulary of the ancient Greeks to distinguish between and define the various forms of love, our Valentine’s Day rituals express them all – passion, friendship, self-giving, commitment and healthy love of self.  Our rituals, large or small, are visible signs of the regard in which we hold one another.  Regardless of spending, love makes everyone feel special.

    

Valentine's Day celebrates loving well

I have always liked Valentine's Day. Its rituals of celebration mirror the way in which our understanding of love develops over time, and deepens as we mature in every way.

 From elementary school ...
From my elementary school days, I fondly recall the paper booklets with punch-out Valentines. They had simple and wholesome pictures with corny phrases that were amusing or promising, depending on your age. A six year old might laugh at a kitten meowing, “You’re purrfect”, while a ten year old might see an invitation in a card with the caption, “Let’s hang out”. 

In those days, teachers did not require us to give everyone in the class a Valentine. Because my mother was ahead of her time, and insisted that no one be left out, everyone received a Valentine from me. Still, like the other girls, I had a hierarchy for giving Valentines. Best friends got the nicest cards. Casual acquaintances got nice cards, and classmates on the periphery got what was left. Selecting cards for the boys required an extra level of attention. While we girls got caught up in this foolishness, the boys were reluctant participants in the Valentine’s Day excitement, until it was time to eat the pink cupcakes with the cinnamon hearts.

I learned something important from those early Valentine’s Day rituals, apart from my standing on the popularity ladder.  Valentine’s Day was an opportunity for inclusiveness. It was a day that encouraged us to extend the hand of friendship to others, and to share in the joy of belonging. I didn’t recognize this immediately because I was self-centered. I was absorbed with the number of Valentines filling the paper bag taped to the side of my desk, and comparing them with those of my friends. My mother was right; it would have been horrible to be left out.

To high school...

In the teenage years, when the boys were more interested, Valentine’s Day rituals celebrated the romantic love affectionately called puppy love. Valentine’s Day was no longer about including others; it was about exclusivity.  It was an opportunity for couples, or would be couples, to declare their affection in some way. I way pretty excited when the guy of my dreams, now my husband of thirty years, offered me a ride home from school one Valentine's Day.

And beyond ...

As a young mother, the focus of Valentine’s Day shifted to a celebration of family. Cards, special treats, and a heart-shaped cake made the day special.  Our little rituals celebrated the uniqueness of each child, and the deep bonds within our family.

An act of will in response to the heart
My appreciation for Valentine’s Day remains undiminished after thirty years of marriage. My husband and I always acknowledge the day in some way.  It’s a chance to express our gratitude for the gift of one another. This is a gratitude that grows deeper with each passing year, and is strengthened in the crucible of life’s joys and challenges. While romance need not fade away, Valentine’s Day is a gentle reminder that love is an act of the will in response to the complex emotions of the heart and the vicissitudes of life.

Valentine’s Day is a celebration of loving well. It celebrates the expansive force of love that moves us from self-absorption towards an ever-increasing awareness of others. For me, Valentine’s Day most profoundly expresses the self-giving love that characterizes the best in human relationships, and mirrors the unconditional, self-emptying love of God.

Costumes of pretense

As a child, I really loved Halloween. I would look forward to it for weeks. Once I had decided on a costume, my mother began working away in her little sewing room.  She was inventive; she could refashion clothing we had outgrown, scraps of extra fabric, and previous costumes into something that satisfied my childhood imagination. As my costume took shape, my anticipation grew. When the big night finally arrived, I bubbled over with excitement. 

"Twisted Halloween Candy":
Courtesy of Stuart Miles

Trick or treating was great fun. We would we traipse around the neighborhood, often trudging through the first snowfall of the season, using pillowcases for candy sacks. For weeks afterwards, we consumed the haul of goodies that simultaneously satisfied and intensified our craving for treats.


The goodies, delicious as they were, were secondary to my love of Halloween. The thing I most enjoyed was masquerading.  When I put on that costume, I assumed a new persona: childhood angst melted away.  When I put on that costume, my dreams became reality: the sky was the limit.  It was a grand feeling!

The next morning I always felt a little sad. While I would have liked to continue to pretend, my loving but organized mother laundered, folded, and stowed my costume away at the back of a closet.  By the afternoon of November 1st, my costume was a sweet memory. It was time to “get real”.  It was time to be me.

Halloween fired my imagination

Halloween served a useful purpose in my childhood, other than the obvious benefit of free candy. It fired my imagination.  The act of pretending helped me discover my self, reshape my dreams, and accept the realities of life. Paradoxically, pretending helped me be real.

It is easy to become distracted from being real. As we outgrow the Halloween of childhood, we may develop increasingly elaborate pretenses as adults. We may succumb to cultural influences that tempt us away from self-discovery and self-acceptance.

Courting falsehoods about ourselves

Consumerism and the beauty industry are two cultural influences that entice us into participating in a masquerade, and encourage us to court falsehoods about ourselves. Consumerism convinces us that our wants are needs, and pressures us to purchase items we can ill afford. When we should be reaching out to others or facing up to our financial realities, the culture of consumerism goads us into spending on ourselves. Meanwhile, the culture of beauty sings its anti-aging siren song, deluding us into a superficial denial of our own mortality. 

"Beauty":  Courtesy of Salvatore Vuono

While there is nothing innately wrong with possessions and looking our best, focusing on these externals can make us superficial and self-centered.  Our preoccupation with ourselves begins to sap our resources and our energy. We have little left to give others because we are consumed with our cravings. The externals are like sugar laden Halloween treats: just when we think we have eaten our fill, we find ourselves craving more.

Eventually, this focus on externals makes us unhappy. Since there will always be new stuff available for purchase, and since the signs of aging are inevitable, we may feel perpetually dissatisfied. Since there will always be someone with better stuff, and someone better looking, we may feel that we do not measure up. We may feel unworthy unless we are costumed to participate in society’s elaborate masquerade.

Confusing the content of our personhood 

When this happens, we are no longer real; we are pretending. We have replaced the splendid homespun Halloween costumes of our childhood with consumer goods and a fraudulent idea of beauty.   We confuse the content of our personhood with the quality of our possessions and our physical attractiveness. We need a loving mother to make us take off our costume, and to nudge us towards confidently showing the world our resplendent selves.

We long for loving mother figures in our lives to reassure us that we are loved and loveable even without the grandiose masquerade. Love gives us the courage to strip away the externals. Love empowers us to discover the beauty within. Love gently leads us to accept our realities, and encourages us to dream in life giving ways.

We “get real” when we shed our costumes, stop masquerading, and focus on the content of our personhood. We become real when we allow others to love us despite our imperfections and inadequacies. It is truly a grand feeling!


                                                  Happy Halloween

Photo courtesy of M & J Lawson

Photo Credits: Free Digital Photos http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/

• "Twisted Halloween Candy" Image courtesy of Stuart Miles: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/Candy_Sweets_and_Cho_g180-Twisted_Halloween_Candy_p55117.html
• "Beauty" Image courtesy of Salvatore Vuono: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/Beauty_and_Cosmetics_g283-Beauty_p42208.html