It is said that February 14th originally became a lover’s holiday when the ancient Romans celebrated Lupercalia, an annual fertility festival.
Circa 496 AD, the then Pope, Gelasius, declared February 14th to be St. Valentine’s Day, a Christian feast day.
On St. Valentine’s Day in AD 1400, a court is opened in Paris. It’s a High Court of Love, dealing with affairs of the heart, and shortly after that the first recorded Valentine’s note is written by the imprisoned Duke of Orleans, to his beloved.
The growth and constant traditional transitions continued through the mid-eighteen century when the passing of love notes became popular in England, through the mid-nineteenth century when Esther Howland of Worcester, Massachusetts, started producing cards in the United States.
I know, I know…This is all very interesting! Now I’ll get to the point:
Love is love is love. I am proud to be a member of such a beautiful, mixed-race family. The Sparrows, and thousands of other perfectly blended partnerships, have the honor of being key players in that constant traditional transition I just spoke of. I doubt that during any of the above fore-mentioned moments in history did the couples celebrating Valentine’s Day look as lovely as we do! Oh yes…LOVELY, and do you know what makes us so? Because we love with our whole hearts, our souls, regardless of the differences in our complexion, the texture of our hair, the spices in our food, or the language we first spoke.
I feel confident that people like us are helping humanity inch ever closer to that perfect, Biblical, unconditional love we should all be striving for…and I believe that one, little day in February is just too little time to acknowledge such a glorious thing! So, to my perfectly created husband, and to all of you (Black, Brown, Cream, and All-in-betweens), Happy Valentine’s Day Life! Keep loving each other the way you do and maybe, someday, the world will catch up.
