Valentine’s Wishes

Valentine’s Day is a topic that is near and dear to the heart. In fact, that is central theme of the celebration of the day. Love in all of its guises: Platonic, familial, requited and unrequited, chaste, romantic, sensual, and red-hot sizzling sexual love.

There is something about the topic of love that brings out the poet in lovers, friends, and admirers. Love is a topic that is celebrated in every medium that humans can command. The desire to share the heat and the fire of passion sparks the creative drive. Where there is love there is a desire to celebrate it in deed and in word. To chase the ineffable in syllables and sound and bits of language; to elucidate and demonstrate the thoughts that drive us towards one another.

Saint Valentine’s Day, known also as Valentine’s Day, is a holiday that derives its lineage from liturgical celebration of one (or more!) of the early saints named Valentinus, with the legend being that Valentinus offered succor to the early persecuted Christians. It was a poet who has the first recorded usage of equating the day with romantic love. Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century crafted “Parlement of Foules” and the rest, as they say, is history.

To this day, February 14th is celebrated throughout much of the world – and beyond for all we know – as a day when the love that flows between mates, dates, friends, lovers, and those whom one would bestow best wishes upon is made known. The day is typically commemorated by the sharing of cards and missives and email messages and tweets and pokes that express affection and attempt to capture the effect of the emotions. It is a day when flowers and jewelry and romantic acts mentioned in the Kama Sutra and Japanese Pillow Books and Marital Aid manuals are practiced with earnestness; the champagne flows and the petals of precious blossoms are strewn. It is a day for poetry, words of admiration, friendship, love, and romance.