Will You Be Doing Any Religious or Spiritual Things This Valentine’s & Chinese New Year?
Both Valentine’s Day and Chinese New Year happen to be on the same day this year–February 15th, which is this coming Sunday. Will you be doing anything in a religious or spiritual way to celebrate or mark either of these events? Thanks for your thoughts!
April 4th, 2011 at 4:00 am
This Chinese New Year will be the year of the Tiger. Yes , I’ll be spending both celebration with my Chinese friends exchanging cultural meaning of what each event represent to each other and why we celebrate them.
April 4th, 2011 at 4:40 am
Yes. I will be forsaking it. For those who are believers, we should come to understand the holidays and traditions that we allow ourselves to celebrate and worship. Valentine’s Day is one of many holidays that are rooted in paganism. His Name is not to be intermingled with such things. Yet out of tradition we allow the very thing that saves us to shake hands with with the very thing that destroys us–idolatry.
April 4th, 2011 at 5:16 am
Yes. St Valentine’s Day is the feast day of a Christian Saint and it lands on a Sunday this year.
All Christians should appreciate this martyr who died about 269 C.E.
Little is known for sure about Valentine. Whoever he was, Valentine really existed because archaeologists have unearthed a Roman catacomb and an ancient church dedicated to Saint Valentine. In 496 C.E. Pope Gelasius marked February 14th as a celebration in honor of his martyrdom.
A book published in 1493 tells this story: Valentine was a Roman priest martyred during the reign of Claudius the Goth [Claudius II].
Since he was caught marrying Christian couples and aiding any Christians who were being persecuted under Emperor Claudius in Rome [when helping them was considered a crime], Valentine was arrested and imprisoned.
Claudius took a liking to this prisoner — until Valentine made a strategic error: he tried to convert the Emperor — whereupon this priest was condemned to death.
He was beaten with clubs and stoned; when that didn’t do it, he was beheaded outside the Flaminian Gate [circa 269].
One legend says, while awaiting his execution, Valentine restored the sight of his jailer’s blind daughter.
Another legend says, on the eve of his death, he penned a farewell note to the jailer’s daughter, signing it, “From your Valentine.”
St. Valentine is the Patron Saint of affianced couples, bee keepers, epilepsy, fainting, greetings, happy marriages, love, lovers, plague, travelers, young people.
http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=159
With love in Christ.