Wait, that’s this week?  It can’t be this week. Sweet St. Ambrose it is this week!  Battle stations! Battle stations, man the lifeboats, buy the flowers!

Well hello again Cairn university, we find ourselves again at the center of the maelstrom of hormones and excess spending: Valentine’s Day!  How did the feast day of an early church martyr turn into an annual festival of candlelit dinners and overpriced chocolate rather than vespers?  Who cares, let’s celebrate the darn thing and get this discussion underway!

Valentine’s at Cairn seems a particularly interesting proposition.  The college setting is ideal for romance, throwing hundreds of people of opposite gender, similar age, and generally adjacent world views together in a loosely confined and structured space creates a bubbling swamp of potential mates.  While this can lead to the destructive mantra of “ring by spring”, it also leads to fruitful, beautiful Christian marriages. How then do we navigate this puddle of uncertainty? I’m not sure; that’s between God, you, and your love.

For those of you just starting out in a relationship:

For those of you starting a new relationship, this day matters the most, more so than any of the other human categories.  You are still early in the lifelong process of discovering another person. Your quirks are still mysterious and you have trouble remembering one another’s favorite flavor of pie.  (Note: Ladies, this will be a lifelong struggle for your man. Be patient; he’s trying. Just because he forgets your favorite pie doesn’t mean he doesn’t care; he’s just not spending his free time thinking about pie.)  This is the period in which grand gestures, romantic dinners, and… holding hands… (If you’re lucky) will be at their most awkward and exploratory. Do they have sweaty palms? Are they allergic to shellfish? All will come in time.

My advice to couples just starting is to go out for a lunch rather than a dinner, but do make this day special.  Taking quality time to celebrate your relationship will elevate the uniqueness between the two of you. While college is a time of stretched budgets and absurdly expensive books, treating yourself and the person you love to some fancy food is a simple pleasure that you should share.  Someone once said the way to the heart is through the stomach. It may not be true, but why take this risk? Share some food, dance if you dare, and make your day special.

For those of you in a long-term relationship:

Congratulations!  You have reached the stage of a relationship where there are few secrets between you.  You know that feeding your significant other a hazelnut will kill them on the spot. You know what songs they like to listen to on the radio.  You know which seat they choose in the cafeteria. At this point, you probably have at least pondered, if not outright declared, that Valentine’s Day is a scam, concocted by big cocoa and a cabal of rogue florists.  You may be right, but what you have really said: “I don’t care enough about market trends to not get the person I love something special on a day culturally accepted for exchanging romantic gifts.” Real classy.

The way to get around this would be to have a casual Valentine’s day.  Stay in, ignore the expensive bits, make a meal for each other, steal some time to do something that may not be glamorous, but means a lot to you.  Make it a quiet day, a day of companionship or even celebrate the day after or on the weekend following. If the pretense of the holiday bothers you, you can easily remove the pretense without losing the excuse to do something romantic for someone you love.  Who cares what everyone else is doing?

For those of you who have had the gift of singleness thrust upon you:

I hear it coming already: the wave of social media complaints about being alone, the cries of Valentine’s day being unfair, singles awareness campaigns.  I understand where you are coming from. It can be painful, incredibly painful, to be alone on a day dedicated to romance; however, blanketing social media with these artifacts of loneliness accomplishes what, exactly?  Letting everyone know your inner hurt? Guilt-tripping the people blessed with companionship? Is that the goal? Believe me, I know what it feels like to be alone on Valentine’s day, convinced that no one loves you. I can assure you two things: (1) someone does in fact love you and (2) complaining about being alone won’t help you feel any better for any meaningful length of time.  Being alone hurts. It truly does and sometimes pain requires grief. Though I will never criticize anyone for grieving their pain, that does not open the door to criticize people for celebrating their joy or criticizing society for enshrining and capitalizing on that joy. Is it not better that a culture elevates something positive rather than negative?

While Valentine’s day can have negative connections to lust and excess, its basis comes from a memory of sacrificial, Christian love.  The adoption of romantic love under the name Valentine may not be historically accurate, but romantic love for Christians is a sacrificial love, or at least ought to be.  Making people feel worse about finding and searching for love in their lives is not in any way a Christ-like attitude. While Valentine’s Day, as it is, is a thoroughly flawed holiday, why complain about it and hide, when it can be used to create joy between other believers?

In closing, Valentine’s day is what you make of it.  If it is the focus of your social calendar, something is wrong.  If you love it, good for you! Don’t let the cultural dilution of love take over our knowledge of what love should really be.  Nice things and special time together do matter and setting aside a special day for it has nothing inherently wrong with it. If you hate it, get over it.  This may sound harsh, especially with the constant cultural pressure to embrace the day, but this is a time of joy for other people. You may criticize it, certainly, cultural institutions deserve scrutiny, but be careful not to chastise those who participate in it because, frankly, that’s none of your darn business.  If it isn’t objectively evil, and you aren’t a part of it, where do you get off telling people how they ought or ought not participate in it? It’d be like the London Philharmonic trying to teach the New York Mets how to run a double play drill: humorous, pitiful, and an unmitigated disaster.

Please remember, our God is love itself and He loves you beyond all understanding, no matter how alone you feel.

Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.