Saint Hallmark's Day

Valentine's Day is here once more!

It's now half past one on the morning of Sunday the 14th of February and I'm in no way fit to sleep yet. I've therefore decided to be seasonal and to publish a blog post in commemoration of society's most commercial yet loveable holiday, Saint Valentine's Day. Before all of this, though, let's take a quick look at the profile of the man responsible for the feast day, Saint Valentine himself.


Saint Valentine is one of those ancient Christian saints of whom the church knows next to nothing. Other examples of this type of saint are Saint Cian, who was a Welsh hermit, and Saint Peris, who was apparently Saint Cian's master. Damn. My namesake was a manservant. Anyways, in reality, the very existence of saints like Saint Valentine is disputed and I like to think that, even if these people really did exist, their worthiness of sainthood and divinity have been grossly exaggerated by the passing of the years. With the complete lack of any reasonable historical evidence to prove that these people even existed we have to take what we hear about these early saints with a pinch of salt and remember that back in the third century the process of becoming a saint involved nothing more than someone of power in the Church declaring you a saint. There was no inquiry into the religious worthiness of these people. It's probable that most of them purchased their reputation and that their celebrity was based on misinformation.

Pope Gelasius I, who declared Valentine a saint in the first place, described him as being among those martyrs "..whose names are justly reverenced among men, but whose acts are known only to God." This was said 200 years after the death and apparent martyrdom of Valentine. Oh, and the Church thinks that Valentine could have been one of three people:

• A priest in Rome.
• A bishop of Interamna, an ancestor of the modern Italian town of Terni.
• A martyr in the Roman province of Africa.
  

In short, don't take Saint Valentine's legacy seriously.
It's complete codswallop.


As we've seen, the historical credibility of Saint Valentine is laughable by modern standards, but when has the reason for a holiday ever mattered? Valentine's Day has evolved into a wonderfully materialistic day on which courting couples declare their love for each other by spending, spending and spending some more. The only real profit is found in the money earned by the likes of the major card companies and, to a lesser extent, florists and restaurants. It's played up to be important and undue pressure is put on people, especially men, to splurge out and impress their partners. Sure, show her that you care, but do you really need to spend €20 on that bouquet of flowers to do so?

Me, I won't need to worry about the material aspects of Valentine's Day this year because my valentine is in the US of A at the moment. When I do see her again, I will acknowledge Valentine's Day with a small token of affection, but it will be of my own creation and won't contribute to the huge profit made by corporations involved in the holiday each year.