Paint every day with love

February is love month and when the calendar ticks towards the week of the 14th, couples around the globe are almost always getting ready to paint the town red. It’s one of the reasons I love February — right after Chinese New Year, I still get to wear the red clothes that I like and there are still plenty of events around town to look forward to.

Valentine’s Day is a celebration of love, which I’m told dates back to as early as the 5th century Roman festival of Lupercalia, held in mid-February (either 14 or 15 February). This festival celebrated the coming of spring and included fertility rites like the pairing of women with men by lottery. Pope Gelasius I co-opted the pagan rite by marking the festival as St. Valentine’s Day — a day of romance. Valentine’s Day is a celebration of lovers’ affection for one another, plotted to bring happiness and warmth and a special day to profess each other’s love.

If you’ve read my previous columns, you know that I like to contemplate the meanings of holidays. My own philosophy towards romance is that love should be kept fresh, that every day we must strive to remind ourselves and each other about what first made us love each other. Valentine’s Day is therefore just another day to make my affection known — and it doesn’t have to mean buying flowers and chocolate or otherwise spending a lot of money.

Much of the commentary on Valentine’s Day is that it’s needlessly commercialized — and I agree, to a degree.

But more than commercialization, I think the bigger issue with Valentine’s Day is that it can be exclusionary. Celebrating romantic love inevitably makes those without it keenly aware of what they do not have. A student of mine once told me that 14 February is Singles Awareness Day. I laughed because I have not been single for a long time and because I’m sure that it was meant as a joke, but over the years I’ve wondered if there are ways to make the day less of an “either/or” date (as in “either you are happily in love or feeling bereft because you are not”).

The brief research that I conducted before writing this article has not made clear why St. Valentine was even associated with lovers. Sure, he conducted marriage ceremonies for Christian couples but he was martyred for aiding persecuted Christians in general and refusing to renounce his faith. Like many saints, he stands as a reminder of steadfast love for God and other people. I think we can take something more universal from that.

I hope you spent your Valentine’s Day expressing love and affection — towards loved ones, strangers and even yourself. If anything, it should be about fostering happy relationships of all sorts. Mend fences, treat your loved ones, help those less fortunate and even show yourself some care. (So many people forget that we need to love ourselves, too.) Use the day not as a one-time special occasion but as a reminder of how we should try to be every day of the year.

Valentine’s Day is for everyone — regardless whether you are single or not, bitter or happy, content or still looking. Happy (belated) Valentine’s Day and may we paint the town with love not only on this day but in the days to come!