February 14, 2008
Valentime(sic)
Early on, greeting cards sent on St Valentine Day commonly included comic lampoons. It’s only of late that we’ve got into the delicate sweetness-and-light-with-borders-of-old-lace syndrome.
Actually, what we do on this Day is a much altered survival — as you may have guessed by now because so much stuff is — of an ancient Roman mid-February fertility rite too ghastly to describe in a family column, but a more modern and less macabre variety of which is frequently the subject of TV dysfunction commercials. I can report, however, that the rite was thought to be equally quite as useful.
On the other hand and for whatever it’s lagniappe value, there were two fellows named Valentine, both martyred in Rome at different times in the third century. But their connection with the modern observance has nothing to do with what little — which is very little — is known of their lives. The name seems to be a common sort of name association — valatin cognate with galatin, a gallant, a lover. Hence, mayhaps, sweetness and light and lace is on target, after all.
The idea that saints, if, indeed, these two were saints (martyrs, maybe, but saints?), who have been assigned particular functions by chance association with their names seems strange to many, except, perhaps, the Hallmarkers.
There are those of a more pious bent who are stricken by the notion that any observance at all of such a time is irreligious. And then there are those of a less pious bent who’d probably be altogether pleased, the less religion, the better.
FootNote: The forthcoming Sunday preachment usually occupying this space (in this case Lent 2A) will be along shortly. First, ya gotta have heart.
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