Last week someone told me about “Ice Cream for Breakfast” day. It seems every day of the year has been commandeered for some special event or focus, though most of them fall through the cracks and fail to receive any noteworthy attention. Some may consider this unsurprising, but I sometimes wonder why we simultaneously accept and ignore these gimmicky pseudo-celebrations, while holding so consistently yet often unenthusiastically to our major holidays.
The modern Valentine’s Day is used to celebrate romantic relationships. This is technically in keeping with its origins as a commemoration of Saint Valentine, to whom legend attributes a passion for the holy sacrament of marriage. Properly defined, a holiday (literally “holy day”) is a day set apart for special remembrance or reflection. We set such days throughout the year as the Israelites set stone monuments as accounted in Joshua 4 – And those twelve stones, which they took out of the Jordan, Joshua set up at Gilgal. And he said to the people of Israel, “When your children ask their fathers in times to come, ‘What do these stones mean?’ then you shall let your children know, ‘Israel passed over this Jordan on dry ground.’” (verses 20-22). Thus, Valentine’s Day serves as an opportunity to remember and appreciate the romantic love that Saint Valentine valued so highly.
That being said, my own observation of this holiday has a slightly different purpose. Growing up, I could hardly have properly comprehended the intended focus, nor was I expected to. I understood the day to be about “love;” my siblings and I would prepare “valentines,” through which we expressed appreciation for each other. Thus, our celebration was more focused on familial love. As I grew older, the importance of family became a core part of my worldview, and with this progression my value for the holiday that had come to represent it increased as well.
Every year I inevitably will hear someone complain to me about the “commercialization” of Valentine’s Day. I’m more inclined to mourn the secularization of our culture that lies beneath such trends; even those who sense the loss often fail to appreciate its true depth, longing for a counterfeit celebration of love that is not real, because it is not sourced in God. For me, Valentine’s Day has become one of the most important holidays of the year; it is a day to reflect on and appreciate the relationships that I have, the friends and family that God has given me.
Be loving; you are loved! TTT