Valentine's Day

Not many people know that Valentine's Day was first celebrated in the 5th century at the behest of some Pope I'd never heard of, as a day to honor Christian martyrs; it turns out that many early Christian martyrs were named Valentinus [not much mystery in how that name died out, eh?]


It wasn't until the 14th Century that the day had any romantic connotations, and when it did, it was in large part due to Chaucer's Parlement of Foules, where he famously wrote: "For this was Saint Valentine's Day, when every bird cometh there to choose his mate." Chaucer actually was talking about birds, but the image had more of an impact than he could imagine [love-birds, anyone?] and subsequent authors including Shakespeare, John Donne and Charles d'Orleans also wrote about the day and its powerful romantic qualities. In a period obsessed with courting and platonic love, the concept not only held, but spread, and the day began to take on a new meaning.


You know the rest, or at least know it as well as I do, because you see what Valentine's Day is today, or at least what it has become.


From what I have seen, it has become a day where people in relationships go out and buy flowers and nice cards and expensive dinners to show their love for one another. It has become a special day [special enough to even have a terrible movie made about it] so it only makes sense to go out and do special things, things that you normally wouldn't do -- like buy and drink champagne, or go out to a nice restaurant or give her a necklace or write her a card and tell her you love her, and then everyone goes home and posts photos on Facebook of their flowers and their nice meals and the beautiful things they're doing and you feel sorry for the people that don't have anything to post or share.


The problem is that champagne and chocolates taste just as good on January 14th as they do on February 14th. Nice restaurants and flower-shops are open year-round, and you almost always have a free half hour to sit down and write out something nice.


The obvious point is that anything you can do on Valentine's Day can be done on any other day of the year. [Except go to basketball or hockey games scheduled to be played on February 14th, or anything scheduled to take place on February 14th, 2012. Those, I guess, can only be experienced on the day itself. I'm sure a point as stimulating as this one would have been raised if I'd tried having this conversation with my brother, which thankfully, I haven't been forced to have yet.]


This obvious point leads to [but certainly does not beg] questions as obvious as these:


-why do people feel obligated to do something special on days like today [a day, as we've discovered, which was essentially created by dead Popes and poets], but feel little to no obligation to perform these special acts on the days/weeks/months that follow?
-who decided nice things [like dinners, etc] should also be rare things, usually reserved for the days of obligation?
-why is there so much love on Valentine's Day, but so little love on all the rest?


Let me be clear: I'm not joining the chorus of Valentine's Day haters. I think the world is a better place when there is more love in it, when people are good to each other, and that obviously takes place on Valentine's Day. And I'm not being corny and trying to argue that every day should be Valentine's Day, because that would be awful too. All I'm saying is that so much thought is directed to this one day and much of it seems to dissipate on the morning of the 15th and I don't know why that is.


I don't claim to be the perfect boyfriend [though Kristin would likely argue otherwise], but it seems that the challenge isn't to make someone feel special one or three or seven days out of a year. It's about the other days, all of them.


Today was just another day for Kristin and me. We didn't get to spend much time together, but I saw her briefly and got to give her a hug and annoy her a little bit, which are two of the more enjoyable things I can do on a Tuesday, or any day for that matter. We'll see each other plenty later in the week [though, much like a heroin addict can never have enough smack, Kristin has mentioned a few times that she physically craves my presence after prolonged absences, so we'll see if the time spent together is enough for her].


Our plans for the rest of the week are beautifully vague -- a few dinners, maybe go see a movie, but mostly just be together, because that seems to be the key ingredient, not the appetizers or the atmosphere of a place but instead just being able to look across at the person who made your stomach drop the first time you saw them and who still makes it drop when they look at you as they did then.


I decided that it was wonderful that today was just another day, because that's all it is, all it really ever has been.


But there was a moment tonight where I was standing behind the bar and I thought of Kristin and how she scrunches her face sometimes when she smiles and a little while afterwards I looked at the clock in the office and it wasn't Valentine's Day anymore -- the 15th less than an hour old -- and that somehow made it all the more fitting, because I adored this girl yesterday and today, and if she doesn't ever discover how much of a moron I truly am, then tomorrow as well.


May it never change, no matter what the Popes and poets say.