In the name of St Valentine, we must rush to the shops to buy cards, balloons, chocolates and lavish gifts for our loved ones. Society will put pressure on all of us to persuade that this is how we must express our love to one another. Love hurts they say….. this being said if we look at the romantic trail leading to this human phenomenon we will begin to realize that this is very true in many ways than just the literal interpretation of the belief in this intangible faith. So let us cut to the chase. St Valentines was a celebrated martyr said to have been decapitated on February the 14th around 269-270AD in the rein of the Roman emperor Claudius Gothicus. The legend states that an aristocrat Asterius allowed father Valentinus to preach to him and he responded to this by making a request. His request was that he wanted him to cure his Daughter from her blindness. So father Valentine did just this by placing his hands on her head and chanted a few gospel words and viola she was cured. He then baptized Asterius and his whole family just like that. When Emperor Gothicus found out he ordered St Valentini to be killed so they beheaded him. There is a very similar legend to this one which resulted in the same order of decapitation by Emperor Gothicus so if you are interested and want to make your own mind up on which one is more plausible please research it.
So with that out of the way time went by and the medieval legends which were repeated in modern history depict Father Valentini performing Christian marriage rituals and the storey about him healing this blind girl that he may have healed gave birth to Valentine’s day in the least monotonous and factual way I could possibly narrate.
The love connection with this day was emphasized thousands of years later by the Author of “The Canterbury tales” Geoffrey Chaucer were he wrote in his “Parlement of Foules”:
“For this was on seynt Volantynys day. Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make.”
The above quote symbolizes the birds which pair off to produce eggs in the Month of February.
Romantic right? From this day on romantic notes written by famous writers such as Shakespeare the French Duke of Orlene’s and many others in reference to this started to appear around the tragic romanticized story of Father Valetini’s murder. This inspired people to write their loved ones notes on this day.
Centuries passed and the Eniglish love for writing love notes on the 14th February was overridden for by the love of gift giving and receiving like some other celebrated Christian traditions. So for the love of God and a symbol of nature let us think how we can save our beloved earth this Valentine’s day.
Unfortunately, I will not be very romantic here as my other half will read this before Valentine’s day but I will be planting a fruit tree with her this year and in true Valentine fashion I will write the following.
A tree starts from a seed and a seed gives me a great fascination thus we sow this and nurture it with love. Small fragile and given the right condition it will germinate and grow into a healthy sapling while adapting to its surroundings. Given the right conditions as time passes this will bloom and produce wonderful flowers which are strung on the established braches waiting for the magic of pollination such as the magic of the miraculous legends of valentine’s day. Like flowers, we also need help and must accept others as we are not the only interaction that will save our planet. In return, our blossoms and the pollen must be shared so that we can collectively produce a loving community that will continue to nurture our future generations with more trees. After all, we are here in nature and to love we must give each other respect, honesty, trust, and loyalty. For this reason, we will be planting a fruiting tree together this year rather than buying something useless such as a plastic-wrapped chocolate box or flowers wrapped in plastic or any other creative ideas that the capitalist trade invented to romanticize such a tragic event in history. This will give us a good platform to give back the same values we wish to give each other and to the rest of the world even when we get old and die as by then our tree will be well established and much fruit will be enjoyed.
