Who Needs A Heart When A Heart Can Be Broken?

 Giving or receiving any hearts without the aid of any sort of anesthesia seems ill-advised. And yet, here we are again, faced with the vast and incomprehensible void of uncertainty, the one we call Valentine's Day. Having now spent half my life in a committed relationship, the real terror has waned. The notion that I would not have a date on Valentine's Day has eased off. A bit. It has been replaced by the fear of trying to remain romantically engaged while the daily thrumming of life continues unabated. 

Why is this day special? Apparently there was a saint, or maybe two, that defied the decree of Roman Emperor Claudius II who felt that single, unattached men made better soldiers and outlawed marriage. Valentine, legend suggests, kept on marrying young lovers in spite of this executive order. He was put to death for his trouble. Or maybe it was the other guy named Valentine who was trying to help Christians escape the brutal Roman prisons, and was locked up himself. He fell in love with the jailer's daughter, and before he was executed, he sent a letter to her inscribed "from your Valentine." 

Or maybe it was the newly minted Christians who chose to put their mark on the pagan festival of Lupercalia, a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus. These boys were nurtured by a she-wolf, and while that kind of thing went over big in ancient Rome, it wasn't quite on brand with the slightly less bestial Christians. But since there was already a feast day set aside for the Ides of February, why not go ahead and move it back just a day and start selling boxes of chocolate and crepe paper hearts to cash in on what was already a going concern? 

Someone in the Middle Ages got it into their heads that February 14th was also the beginning of mating season for birds, so what better day to insist on young men and women to follow suit, if not just a little less avian and perhaps more discretely? 

So all these centuries later, we continue to subject ourselves to the outsized expectations of martyred saints and pagan rituals, fueled by the biological noticings of some Middle Aged bird fanciers. No pressure. Unless you view it from the perspective of the ten year old boys and girls who are told they must have a tiny SpongeBob card for every member of their class, even though there is really only one that they care about. Or the husband who looks around the house the weekend before the big day for anything that might resemble a thoughtful and romantic gesture.

Well. Here it is, sweetheart. Happy Valentine's Day.