Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, a holiday that originated as the feast day of St. Valentinus, who was beaten and beheaded in Rome on February 14, 269 for refusing to renounce his faith. How this brutal event became a celebration of romantic love involves some tenuous associations and dubious legends: Valentinus performed secret marriages for Roman soldiers when the emperor forbid marriage, Valentinus wrote a letter to a girl he’d healed of blindness signed “your Valentine,” birds begin to couple up around February 14. Valentinus is also the patron saint of epilepsy and beekeepers, neither of which are often associated with romantic love. I suspect a more likely explanation is that by February 14, in the middle of chill grey winter, most of us in the Northern Hemisphere are so starved for a little romance and color that we’ll jump on any excuse for eating chocolate, donning pink and red, and sending cards and flowers to loved ones.  

On the other hand, if St. Valentinus was so devoted to his faith and God that he was wiling to undergo imprisonment, torture, and death, maybe he’s not such a bad exemplar of love – not the lovey-dovey smitten-ness we elevate on Valentine’s Day, but a long and deeply rooted devotion. 

Like the love my son has for basketball.

Click here to continue reading this week’s “Faith in Vermont” column in The Addison Independent.