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The version of Valentine's Day we experience now is quite different then the origins that the holiday may have evolved from. One particular celebration that may be associated with its origins took place in Rome from February 13-15, it was the feast of Lupercalia.
According to an article by Arnie Seipel with NPR, "the men sacrificed a goat and a dog, then whipped women with the hides of the animals they had just slain." He also added some details like the men were naked and drunk and yet young women would line up for this absurdity because they believed this strange ceremony was going to make them fertile. In the midst of all this was a matchmaking lottery in which young men drew women's names from a jar and then they took that woman to "couple with." (Sort of the ancient version of Tinder I guess.)
Seipel did offer some reassurance in the piece when he explained how the church tried to clean it up a bit, "Later, Pope Gelasius I muddled things in the fifth century by combining St. Valentine's Day with Lupercalia to expel the pagan rituals. But the festival was more of a theatrical interpretation of what it had once been. Lenski added, "It was a little more of a drunken revel, but the Christians put clothes back on it. That didn't stop it from being a day of fertility and love."
It wasn't until after the industrial revolution that it evolved into the sugar-coated Hollywood and hallmark version of a love celebration that it is now.
So, whether you enjoy the day and choose to spend money on trinkets and cards or not, it can still be a time for us to pause and think about what love means to each of us individually.
As words often do, the word love fails to give us much understanding of what it really is.
This vast, powerful, meaningful, beautiful aspect of being human is pretty hard to sum up in a hallmark card or a poem.
We all have our own ideas of what love means to us, and to make it even more complex there are so many different kinds of it.
The love of a parent, a child, a friend, a romantic partner, a pet, a stranger, even the love of nature and the other animals we share this planet with.
We know it when we feel it though, no matter what type of love we are experiencing.
But the romantic kind most often associated with Valentine's Day is probably the most complex of them all.
So many great love songs grasp at words trying to describe it.
Songs written by people that are either struck by the intensity of romantic love and writing from a place of blind bliss or reeling from rejection.
They are falling, longing, dreaming, breaking, crazy, dying, smiling, comparing their lover to the moon, the stars, the ocean, begging, pleading, crying.
They are willing to give up everything just for that first kiss from their lover or to feel their arms around them once again. It's dramatic to say the least.
In her book, 'I Wanted Out' famous journalist Elsie Robinson wrote, "Love (referring to romantic love) has always been the most beautiful and the most torturing thing in my life. It has always existed in hunger, and ended in parting. Perhaps the best way for love to be if life is to go on. But it hurts horribly."
You get it Elsie and I doubt there is a human who has experienced love who wouldn't agree with her wholeheartedly.
Love is like everything else in life, it comes, and it goes. It can feel amazing and it can feel like a wound that will never heal.
Thankfully love is a splendid thing and romantic love is just a tiny color in the kaleidoscope of its beauty.
There are so many different ways to love and doing so makes us part of a positive shift that can change the world for the better.
So, if nothing else we can show a little extra love this month, whether it's romantic or not, the world can always use more of it.
We are not here to find love; we are here to be love.
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Sarah Hurlburt is a correspondent for The Sentinel.