What Valentine’s Day is all about

By Herbert Vego

TOMORROW, February 14, the world will celebrate Valentine’s Day – the unique day when married couples, fiancés and fiancées exchange love notes, whisper sweet nothings and go out for dinner or enjoy the night somewhere romantic.

The most visible symbol of this day in mythology is the legendary winged Cupid. Armed with a bow and arrow, he aims at a man and a woman and pierces through two hearts at once. His victims thus fall — in love.

What about Saint Valentine?

There used to be a “Saint Valentine” — a Roman Catholic priest who used to be venerated as “patron saint of lovers”. But as vaguely written in the Encyclopedia Britannica, he was “martyred during the persecution of Christians by the emperor Claudius II around 270 AD.”

The Roman Catholic Church removed Saint Valentine from its roster of saints in 1969 due to lack of reliable information about him and the fact that Valentine’s Day had become associated with fornication, specifically pre-marital sex and adultery.

Another tale takes us back to the third century when hungry wolves roamed outside of Rome where shepherds kept their flocks. Every February, the Romans celebrated a feast called Lupercalia in honor of the goddess of the spring festival so that no harm would come to the shepherds and their flocks.

During Lupercalia in honor of the goddess Juno Februata, young women put their names into a box on February 14, to be drawn by men. The matching boys and girls would be considered partners for the year.

Juno Februata (“Juno the Purifier” or “Feverish Love”) is a Roman title for the goddess Juno, associated with fertility, marriage, and rituals in February.

To win initial converts, church officials Christianized the ancient pagan celebration, changing its name to St. Valentine’s Day.

Eventually, to give the celebration further meaning and eliminate pagan traditions, priests substituted the names of the girls with those of the saints in the raffle draw. The young people were supposed to emulate the lives of the saints whose names they had drawn.

By the fourteenth century, however, they reverted back to the use of girls’ names.

In the United States today, Valentine’s Day parties include a “raffle of hearts.” The “hearts” are heart-shaped red cardboards cut by half in a unique jigsaw pattern and distributed to single young men and women. Each “half-hearted” male recipient looks for the other half and inevitably finds it in the hand of a female recipient, who then becomes his Valentine.

How has Valentine’s Day come to be known as such?

Let us go back to the priest Valentine who charmed the young and old, rich and poor people to attend his services. As a result, he performed many marriages.

This angered Emperor Claudius, who could no longer recruit soldiers for his wars. The men would no longer leave their wives, families and sweethearts to fight in foreign lands. Claudius eventually banned Valentine from officiating marriages.

Valentine thought this to be unfair and secretly solemnized marriages of several couples. When Claudius found out, he threw Valentine in prison. While there, he performed the miracle of curing a jail guard’s daughter of blindness. Valentine fell in love with the jailer’s daughter and wrote her letters that were signed “From your Valentine.”

Claudius became enraged and had Valentine clubbed and beheaded on February 14, 269 A.D.

In the year 496, according to the New World Encyclopedia, Pope Gelasius declared February 14 St. Valentine’s Day.

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A ‘HIGH-VOLTAGE’ EVENT

PRESIDENT/CEO Roel Z. Castro of Primelectric – the holding company behind MORE Power in Iloilo City, Negros Power in Bacolod City and Bohol Light in Tagbilaran City – revealed in a Viber message to this writer that, as part of the Philippine delegation to a high-level electricity industry event on-going in San Diego, California, he expects to be updated with new technologies and grid upgrades.

The event, sponsored by the United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA), focuses on modern power generation, distribution, and artificial intelligence (AI) deploying advanced sensors, automated controls, and the newest protection equipment to maintain system stability.

The Philippine delegation also includes representatives from the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC).