… and buy into new life, not another opportunity to be sold stuff we don’t need.
The history of Valentine’s Day, rather like all of our seasonal festivals, has a somewhat chequered and mysterious provenance and as with all the festivals, it seems to have been the victim of ‘Christianisation’, because any seasonal celebration held prior to Christian doctrine was deemed a heresy.
Yet, those hidden celebrations were bound by the natural rhythm of the planet: the seasons, daylight and darkness and the renewal of life as we entered spring, which brought with it the promise of food and warmth.
We prioritised the gift of life and the nurturing planet. Our reward for such a celebration was what mother earth had to offer and through those rituals we maintained a respect for the very thing that sustains us.
The monotheistic religions however, stem from the concept of management and control:
“And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” Gen 1:26
An interesting historical hypothesis suggests that monotheism came with the discovery of agriculture, which was in real terms the human capacity to manage and control our surroundings, and even more interesting, that Genesis, in particular the Garden Of Eden, alludes to this profound change.
This is why we have since celebrated the seasonal changes in such a way as to celebrate our success in exercising such control. We sow, we grow, we reap, we keep; preserving and storing what we’ve harvested to be eaten during lean times, hence many of the rituals around Christmas and New Year.
We have cast aside the festivals and rituals that handed over our survival to the whims of planetary forces in favour of those that celebrate our overcoming nature’s adversity and in many ways that makes sense. But have we not also lost something of profundity in doing so? Our ability to control life on earth is conversely the very same thing that is bringing it to its knees!
Perhaps if we take a step back today and stop thinking of hearts and flowers, stop feeling pressured into buying for a loved one because somehow that forcefully grown bunch of roses means you love them more or something, or stop feeling depressed or worse, because there’s nobody to by those roses for and start thinking about the beauty of this time of year.
The first flowers that push through frosty earth …
The birds arriving to nest …
… and the smallest buds on the trees …
You don’t need to buy anything to show how much you love someone!
Take them for a lovely walk to appreciate the change of the seasons. Make them dinner with nourishing foods. Run them a hot soapy bath with candles to combat the cold weather.
If we can do anything out of love today, let’s connect with the natural world because it will remind us of the profound bounty, beauty and essentiality of our mother earth!
