Saint Valentine—he’s a person we know so little about even though he entices us to drop mad cash. I say “mad cash” because we Americans have gone mad spending cash. CNN reports Americans will spend around 19 BILLION dollars this Valentine’s day. Who ever said money can’t buy you love? With all our minds focused on which flowers to buy and dinner reservations to make, we seem to disregard the question: Why do we even celebrate this day?
To be completely honest, most scholars don’t know why. Very little information about Saint Valentine is known to society. The History Channel even states he may have been two different men. Though he is officially recognized by the Roman Catholic Church as being a real person who died around 270 A.D., Pope Gelasius in 496 A.D. questioned his identity when he had been described in two different accounts. The first states Saint Valentine was a priest who was beheaded by emperor Claudius II for secretly helping Christian couples wed. The second states he was the Bishop of Terni who was also put to death by Claudius II somewhere near Rome. Because the stories may have some overlapping details, the two different accounts could be referring to the same person. But, due to all the confusion that surrounds the identity of Saint Valentine, in 1969 the Roman Catholic Church discontinued liturgical veneration of him. Though today they still recognize him as a saint.
So we don’t really know who the guy was or why Valentine’s Day is considered a public holiday (yes, we have created a public holiday for someone we know almost nothing about), but over 62% of adults are celebrating it this year. Who are we kidding? None of us will be thinking about Saint Valentine this February 14th; we’ll be too busy stuffing our faces with unnecessary amounts of over-priced chocolate and drowning in red roses and affection—or being mad and sulking about the fact that we’re not.
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