Did you know that Valentine’s Day began as St. Valentine’s Day, a liturgical celebration of the Christian saint, Valentinus. It is said that St. Valentinus or Valentine was jailed and executed by the Romans for performing weddings and ministering Christians.
The day began commemorating romantic love during the Middle Ages (14th century) after the writings of Geoffrey Chaucer, thought of by many as the father of English literature. Within a century, February 14th evolved into a day when lovers gave flowers, sweets and greeting cards called valentines.
Today, Americans send nearly 200 million valentines and spend nearly $100 each on this day. If you include digital e-cards, over 1 billion notes are expected to be sent this year in the United States alone. Many believe that the meaning of the holiday has been usurped by commercialization rendering the holiday hollow.
For those who choose to ignore Valentine’s Day or have the capacity for another celebration, I direct you February 15th. This day is in many ways far more important to the majority of all Americans. February 15th is special in that it celebrates the emancipation of more than half of all Americans from a life that was deemed as less than equal in the United States as recently 1920.
A woman born on February 15th and at the age of 52 chose to vote in the 1872 Presidential Election. She voted Republican “straight down the ticket.” For that (the vote, not the party preference), she was arrested. She argued that the 14th Amendment guaranteed all naturalized Americans the right to vote with no consideration given to gender. As such she reasonably concluded, woman should be allowed to vote.
When it came time to go to court regarding her “illegal” action, the judge hearing her case, the “Honorable” Ward Hunt, would not allow this woman to speak on her own behalf in while in court. As the jury prepared to retire and determine whether she was guilty or not, Judge Ward explicitly told the jury to find her guilty. After returning with a guilty verdict, the woman in question said, “May it please your honor, I will never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty. All the stock in trade I possess is a debt of $10,000, incurred by publishing my paper ‘The Revolution’ the sole object of which was to educate all women to do precisely as I have done, rebel against your man-made, unjust, unconstitutional forms of law, which tax, fine, imprison and hang women, while denying them the right of representation in the government; and I will work on with might and mine to pay every dollar of that honest debt, but not a penny shall go to this unjust claim. And I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old Revolutionary maxim, “Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.”
She remained true to her word and never paid that $100 fine. An embarrassed U.S. government never enforced the fine. In 1920 which was nearly fifty years later and fourteen years after her death, the 19th amendment was passed and woman finally had the right to vote.
Her name? Susan B. Anthony.
As you consider what to celebrate this weekend, I suggest that you recognize February 15th as much as we do February 14th. The celebration need not be with flowers, gifts or chocolates but with a time for reflection and the realization that the life we all enjoy would not be the same if not for Susan B. Anthony.
