Valentine's Day

188 million Valentine's Day cards are exchanged annually, making Valentine's Day the second-most popular greeting-card-giving occasion. This total apparently excludes packaged kids' valentines for classroom exchanges – and a quick calculation tells me that I bought at least 180 of those during my grade school career.

Over 50 percent of all Valentine's Day cards are purchased in the six days prior to the observance, making Valentine's Day an absolute procrastinator's delight. Having personally engaged in prolific Valentine’s Day procrastination throughout my courtship and marriage to Su, I can understand this phenomena.

I can’t tell you why I procrastinate – only that I do.

How Valentine’s Day came about is a bit of a mystery. Historically, and in many cultures, February has often been a month associated with romance. If you came from the Midwest you would understand why this is true – it is too cold to do much of anything else. Personally I vote for laying most the blame (or credit) for the holiday at Hallmark’s feet.

A good question is “Who was this Saint Valentine and how did he single-handedly inspire so much commercial excess in the name of love?”

Interestingly enough, the Catholic Church recognizes at least three different saints named Valentine or Valentinus - all of whom were martyred for their faith or actions.

One church tradition says that Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men — his recruiting pool. Valentine apparently had great sympathy for young lovers. He defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages in secret. When Valentine's actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death.

There are a lot of famous couples who have come to symbolize love, or, at the very least, romanticism to us: Romeo and Juliet, John and Abigail Adams, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, and any number of current couples appearing in People magazine.

As for me, I have always had a soft spot in my heart for Harry and Bess Truman. Seriously.

President Truman first saw the love of his life in Sunday school when he was six and she was five. He described her as having “golden curls and beautiful blue eyes.” Even though they graduated from high school together in 1901, they didn’t become an item until nine years later.

Well, that’s not true. Actually, it was nine years later that Truman started to try and win Bess’ affection. Becoming an item would take several more years.

Because they lived twenty miles apart, most of the courtship was through letters. I have been told that more than 1300 letters from Harry to Bess Truman can be found in the Truman Library collections. For some reason we don’t have many from Bess to Harry.

After giving her signs of affection for more than a year, Harry proposed to Bess in 1911 – but, she turned him down.

When the United States entered World War I in April 1917, Harry Truman joined a Missouri National Guard field artillery regiment. Throughout his military service in France, Truman carried Bess Wallace's picture in his breast pocket. He wrote to her frequently and was encouraged when she finally promised to marry him when he returned at the end of the war.

I am pretty sure that to the end of his life Truman was prouder of being married to Bess than he was by being elected to the Senate or by becoming President of the United States. Some people would say he did a better job of being Bess’ husband than he did as President!

At this point in life, I am more impressed by couples like the Trumans who persist and maintain their love for each other than I am with the crush of young love. Scripture says, “Be happy with the wife you married when you were young.” (Prov. 5:18) The idea is we should continue to be happy with her even when neither of us are as young as we once were.

Henry Ward Beecher wrote, “Young love is a flame; very pretty, often very hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. The love of the older and disciplined heart is as coals, deep-burning, unquenchable.”

It is late and I still need to get something for Su. I have been looking around for some hot coals, but they seem to be in short supply in this tropical country. I may have to dazzle her with my research on the holiday… wish me luck.