Love and Customs—The Long, Not-So-Romantic Path to the Day of Love

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I don’t like Valentine’s Day. 

I know, I know… You must be thinking… Is she jaded? Has her heart frozen over? Who hurt her?

No, I’m not jaded. At least I don’t see it that way. Age has just made me more practical.

No, I don’t think my heart has gone cold. There are a few people in my life I love deeply. And I’m frequently touch to tears by gestures of kindness.

And yes, plenty of people have hurt me, but we can all say that, can’t we?

I guess I have a problem with obligatory holidays that support behaviors I think we ought to live every day, all for the sake of a capitalistic agenda. I cringe at the practice of monetizing something like love to fill the pockets of corporations.

According to Capital One Shopping, “Consumer spending on Valentine’s Day 2024 totaled $25.8 billion.”

The National Retail Federation (NRF) reports that “Consumers are expected to spend a record $27.5 billion on Valentine’s Day this year.” 

It’s as if, at least for a day, those who embrace the holiday attempt to express their undying love by attempting to satisfy all five love languages just to cover all the bases.

So, how do we make sense of this kind of consumer behavior?

Understanding Love

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To thoroughly explore the psychology behind the rush to buy and spend on V-Day to show one’s love would mean a more in-depth research effort than I’ve done here. But it does help to remember the power of this sometimes destabilizing emotion.

Through the ages, humans have attempted to find, understand, explain, and quantify love, which can encompasses everything from compassion, grace, honor, and respect, to infatuation, lust, limerence, and obsession. It can drive many sane humans to a kind of madness. 

And lovesickness is a thing. From chemical changes in the body and intense emotions, the experience of falling in love can make you physically ill. 

Science shows that love is, in fact, a drug. Being love-struck bathes your brain in dopamine, the feel-good hormone, and it can leave you with a similar euphoria associated with cocaine or alcohol.

Humans seem to be in love with the idea of love… Of people being brought together in some way—whether through a planned introduction by friends or a chance meeting while going through the motions of living a life—and then being held together for eternity by this unexplainable emotion.

Some have spoken to the pain of love. 

  • “Love is a temporary insanity curable by marriage.” —Gabriel Heatter
  • “Pleasure of love lasts but a moment. Pain of love lasts a lifetime.” – Bette Davis
  • “So it’s true when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love.” — E.A. Bucchianeri 

And many have waxed poetic about love’s benefits.

  • “Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.” —Aristotle
  • “Where there is love there is life.” — Mahatma Gandhi
  • “Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.” — Zora Neale Hurston.

Needless to say, when it comes to the greatest human emotion (so it is said), the line between love and lust, sanity and insanity, can be a murky blur of confusion. 

To attempt clarity, it might help to look back to the beginnings of Valentine’s Day.

Lupercalia

Annibale Carracci – Lupercalia, Rome – PICRYL – Public Domain 

The first documented “love” celebrations were those of Lupercalia, an ancient Roman festival celebrated on February 15 from Rome’s founding, around 753 BCE through the end of the 5th century CE. 

The ancient Romans’ notions of love will look a bit perverse to most of us. But many may also not be surprised at the blatant misogyny expressed in the ceremony itself. 

Lupercalia, also called dies Februatus, after the februa—purification instruments—was a pastoral festival observed every year from February 13 to February 15 with the intention to purify the City of Rome and promote fertility and health (while some have associated the celebration with the Roman fertility god, Lupercus).

Word has it that the festival started with animal sacrifices, and some say that after a feast, priests ran from Palatine Hill (where Rome was founded) to the Roman Forum whipping people with bloody strips of animal hide, a symbolic gesture of purification. 

Other accounts tell of a matchmaking ceremony wherein women’s names were drawn from jars by men in attendance, resulting in pairings, of sorts, with the women (fully naked) being slapped with the bloody strips of hide by the men (fully clothed) and having no choice whether or not to “spend time” with the men who had drawn their names—all in the name of fertility.

And still others believe it was connected with the she-wolf Lupa, who nursed Romulus and Remus, after they had been tossed into the Tiber River to drown, all for their mother’s broken vow of celibacy, then rescued by a servant who put them in a basket, which was found and carried by a river-god until it became caught in the branches of a fig tree, and was then discovered by Lupa and cared for by her at the base of Palatine Hill in a den.

Now that’s love…

St. Valentine

St. Valentine—http://interestingliterature.com/2014/02/13/the-literary-origins-of-valentines-day/, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

While the Catholic Church recognized three martyred St. Valentines, it is believed that St. Valentine of Terni is the one responsible for the holiday we know as Valentine’s Day. 

The story goes that during a time in history (around 278 CE) when Roman Emperor Claudius II deemed marriage unlawful as a way to encourage men to join the army, St. Valentine, apparently a romantic at heart, performed ceremonies for love-struck couples in secret. When Claudius II discovered the transgressor’s actions, he beheaded him, but just before his visit to guillotine, St. Valentine penned a note bidding his people farewell and signed it “From Your Valentine.”

His remains are kept in the Basilica of Terni near Rome, and to this day, every year on February 14, they are carried in a small trek to the city’s main cathedral where hundreds of people gather and promise to a lifetime of faithful love. 

No one knows whether Pope Gelasius’ declaration of February 14 as the First Feast Day of Saint Valentine in 496 CE was simply to honor St. Valentine, or if was meant to cast a more Christian light on the bloody and violent Lupercalia Festival.

Alternatives to Valentine’s Day

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So, what do those of us who are committed to singledom do on the Day of Love? 

Many of us carry on as if it’s just another day (it is), while many of us treat ourselves with gestures of self-love (please do this every day), and still others fall prey to loneliness. 

If you’re part of the lonely crowd, follow Leslie Knope’s (Park and Recreation) lead and invite all your girlfriends (if you’re a woman) to a 

Galentine’s Day brunch, typically celebrated on February 13. 

It’s noted to be a day when women leave their husbands and boyfriends at home to show some love to their fellow woman friends. (I can’t help but call out the blatant hetero-normativity.)

__________________

Whatever you think or feel about the day, whether or not you celebrate it, keep in mind that everything we believe and/or celebrate comes from a story of some kind. And usually, those stories have undergone some significant revisions. 

Why not create your own version of what the Day of Love is all about?

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