I’m With Cupid

Joel Schwartzberg
4 min readFeb 14, 2019

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What holiday is less connected to its historical roots than Valentine’s Day? Jesus gets a big shout-out here and there on his birthday. President’s Day may be mostly associated with underwear and mattress sales, but at least Washington’s face graces the newspaper ads. Even Punxsutawney Phil got a movie deal.

But where is St. Valentine? For weeks now, local stores have been celebrating enthusiastically with cheap jewelry, heart-shaped place mats, heart-themed pajamas, and enough chocolate to keep dentists busy through 2020 — yet Valentine himself is treated more like Voldemort.

The poor guy can’t even catch his fair share of controversy. Nobody appears on TV decrying the “War on St. Valentine.” And while public schools sweat over celebrating Halloween and Christmas, cutting symmetrical hearts from red construction paper on Valentine’s Day is as acceptable in American schools as doodling on your notebook and picking your nose. It’s even okay to decorate classroom walls with underage, semi-naked predators, armed with bows and sharp projectiles.

The wide-ranging themes of drugstore punch-out valentine cards best illustrates the disconnect between Valentine’s Day and anything even remotely romantic. At one CVS, I saw Spiderman valentines, Darth Vader valentines, and Thanos valentines. (Apparently, nothing says “I love you” more than a character who threw his daughter off a cliff.)

Many women see no coincidence in the fact that Valentine’s Day occurs only weeks after Super Bowl Sunday. Their explanation: Payback. The card industry supplies annoyed partners and spouses with myriad variations on the theme:

“Dear, I’ve been a pretty mediocre mate for many months now and ignored you completely while watching men tackle each other between beer commercials, so here’s a pop-up card with two chimpanzees making out and my name scribbled underneath. Umm, can we have a ‘date night’ now?”

Some people even think Valentine’s Day was manufactured by greedy card companies (much like “Buy a Card From a Greedy Card Company Day,” which never really took off). But that’s fake news. The needlessly-kept secret is that actual Valentine’s Day history is rich with sacrifice, generosity, and blind love. Think Braveheart meets When Harry Met Sally, minus fake accents and orgasms. The story goes something like this:

Around the year 270, Emperor Claudius II banned marriages because he decided single men made better soldiers than married men. (It’s understandable because single men can use both hands for fighting, whereas married men always need one hand free to hold the remote.)

St. Valentine

Well, a third-century priest named Valentine thought that was pretty bogus, and started performing illegal marriages waaaaaaay before performing illegal marriages became all the rage.

Valentine, “friend of lovers,” got tossed in the slammer for his trouble, but met a charming young blind woman (as is often the case with the newly-incarcerated). He miraculously healed her blindness, after which the girl immediately exclaimed, “Hey, I thought you said you looked like Chris Hemsworth!”

Unfazed, he wrote her a farewell message, signed: “from your Valentine.” The phrase stuck with us forever. Not so everlasting was St. Val, who on February 14 — now known as Valentine’s Day — was beaten, stoned, and decapitated. (I know, how romantic).

This selfless act paved the way to Patron Sainthood, and “Saint Valentine” became the inspiration for a February 14 Roman festival during which young Romans wrote affectionate greetings to girls they liked…or simply wished to enslave. Hundreds of years later, “St. Hallmark of the Mall” appeared on the scene, charged a few bucks for foldable cardboard, and reduced every tender thought between romantic couples into trite rhyming couplets. The rest is history. For more details, check out VH-1’s I Love the 270's!

You don’t need to spread Valentine’s Day’s true roots. I’ll leave that Michael Beschloss. But maybe spend this V-Day — as I will for a good hour or so — doing what Val would have done: Spending quality time with the one you love… and buying her some shiny things. Hey, I may be romantic, but I’m no idiot.

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Joel Schwartzberg

Communications professional, public speaking coach, and author of “Get to the Point! Sharpen Your Message and Make Your Words Matter” www.joelschwartzberg.net