True hope for a happy Valentine's Day

 

“In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.” – Alfred Lord Tennyson

“On Valentine’s Day a young man’s fancy becomes laser focused on thoughts of sex.” There, I said it, so you don’t have to. Let’s face it guys, it’s true (and not just on Valentine’s Day).

Valentine’s Day means different things to different people. For the women, it means love, romance, flowers, chocolates, candies, cards, special meals at a favorite restaurant, and time spent in scintillating conversation with that special someone. For the men it means trying to do all those things without screwing up or breaking the bank.

A woman wants her man to gaze into her eyes and flatter her with sweet nothings. A man wants to stare at her chest and undress her with his eyes. For women, Valentine’s Day is about relationships. For guys, it’s about getting lucky.

With Valentine’s Day upon us, I thought I’d take a moment to do a little research (Googling). Like many of our holidays, Valentine’s Day morphed over the years. The most widely accepted version is that a priest named Valentine was arrested for violating the Roman emperor’s decree forbidding young men to marry so they would be fit to serve in his army. Valentine married couples in secret until Emperor Claudius learned about it and had him imprisoned. While in jail, he fell in love with his jailor’s daughter. On the day he was put to death, Feb. 14, 272, he sent her a letter signed “From your Valentine.”

It is also believed that the pope established Feb. 14 as St. Valentine’s Day in an effort to combat the pagan celebration of Lupercalia, a time of honoring fertility. In the Middle Ages, a common belief arose that Feb. 14 marked the beginning of the mating season for birds. (My rooster, being the male of the species, has proven that mating season is a year-round event, so there!)

Eventually all of these beliefs and the practices of writing letters and giving candies transformed Valentine’s Day into the celebration of love that we have today.

So where does Cupid come from? The winged cherub who flies around shooting arrows of emotion at people got his start around 700 B.C. as the Greek god Eros. Roman mythology called him Cupid, the son of Venus and Mars. He evolved into a flying, cherubic infant with mischievous intent. It wasn’t until the 19th century that images of Cupid began appearing on Valentine’s Day cards that he became a symbol of the holiday.

Valentine’s Day is one of the most popular days for couples to become engaged. Feb. 14, 1999, was the day Sandy and I formally started dating. Engagements lead to weddings. For most of my life I believed that the concept of marriage originated in the Bible as the union of one man and one woman. The oldest known record of marriage dates back to 2350 B.C. in Mesopotamia. It was primarily a contractual tool for formalizing family alliances, transferring property and producing legitimate heirs.

Many cultures over the centuries have recognized varied forms of marriage, including polygamy and same-sex unions. In many cultures women were considered property and the marriage was more about contracts and property rights than it was love and commitment. (Ever hear of arranged marriages?) In fact, the concept of marriage being exclusively based on mutual love is only a couple centuries old.

I’m glad that marriage is based on love and not economics. If the institution of marriage were still economic, there is no way I could have ever gotten married. And I certainly couldn’t afford my wife! She is priceless to me. I am blessed beyond measure to have Sandy to hold ’til death do us part. Our relationship is only made stronger by the third person in it. Ours is a Christ-centered marriage. We are a cord of three strands that is not quickly broken (Ecclesiastes 4:12).

So, as we look at Valentine’s Day, love and marriage we can appreciate the evolution of families and relationships and the impact that they have made on the world as we know it. Let’s not stop celebrating and sharing love once this day has passed. We should honor Valentine’s Day as a reflection of love, romance, commitment, openness, sharing, vulnerability, and the eternal hope of getting lucky!