• On Making St. Valentine's Day a National Holiday

    This blog was originally written in 2011 and rerun a few times at this page's predecessor, WordsUnLtd.com. Here it is again, ripe for the ages until this day of love receives the importance it deserves for honoring love above all else. Three cheers to Hallmark Cards for popularizing it as much as it has been!

    Valentines Day
    Valentines Day
    (Image by Cold Rock Aspley 0417115707)
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    It is one of those times that I know a holiday is within me waiting for expression to its depths.

         There are saints backgrounding several of our major holidays--I consider this one the biggest of them all, for what is our ultimate wealth, joy, stability, prism, magnifier, if not love?

         What was Jesus' message if not love?

         There is All Saints' Day embracing Halloween; St. Patrick's Day, Christmas--Jesus the ultimate saint for many of us, St. Nicholas having jumped on his sleigh only a few hundred years ago.

         There is a Saint Lucia important to the Nordic Christmas, and so on. I'm thinking literally now--not in terms of how sainted our laborers and military have become. That's another article.

         St. Valentine, martyred for giving, martyred for activating love.

         We need to start a movement to make St. Valentine's Day a national holiday. If we tweak our priorities and perhaps turn it into St. Valentine's week--imagine.

         To observe this week-long holiday, we will have to activate love conscientiously every day, every night. We will all get the week off, but hardly a vacation. No trips to the Caribbean. Maybe lots of babies will be born in November.

         But we can create all sorts of ways to celebrate this week. Perhaps it will become the most crime-free of all fifty-two.

         We must be careful not to go any farther into the materialistic aspect than we already have. And then be sure all Valentines not kept are judiciously recycled in a special compost heap of love. What can we do with that?

         We need effective, charismatic leadership to actualize this idea. I'm just a writer. Presidents' Day has been around for years (I remember the days when the two birthdays were celebrated separately, without a three-day weekend). What do we accomplish by lumping Washington and Lincoln with all the other presidents? Not much. "Back in my day" (I don't believe I'm writing this, but Soc. Sec. is just around the corner), we studied Lincoln on Lincoln's birthday, and Washington on Washington's--who tells the story about the cherry tree anymore, or about Lincoln's proverbial and literal burning the midnight oil to educate himself?

         On MLK Day, we have a single focus and a very meaningful experience of another martyr who preached love and nonviolence. All kinds of love lump together far better than do all kinds of presidents.

         I don't know what I'd do with this amorphous creature Presidents' Day. I don't mean to belittle it.

         February is the most holiday-ridden month of the year, though no match for the holiday rush that precedes the materialistic aspect of Christmas--as I've said before, all that spending and gift wrapping are a form of activated love, but not at its highest level.

         We need to learn to give at that level of intensity and quantity at higher levels. We need to learn so much.

         Ideas are most welcome. Shall we draw up a petition to send to Congress? Will it resonate with the top one percent? Will they turn on a giant fan and liquidate all their billions to occupy the lower airs, line birds nests, change lives--these metamorphosed Scrooges must stipulate where the money is to go, to higher levels than the next vertical or horizontal mall.

         The Egyptians have given peace a chance as the whole world watches and wonders.

         Now it's time to give love a chance, too.