Happy St Valentine’s Day, have you received anything nice? Or have you just remembered and are about to streak out of the door in frantic search for heart-shaped chocolates?

Personally me and Mr A don’t really do much for Valentine’s Day.  Usually the weekend before Valentine’s Day one of us will ask, “shall we do anything for Valentine’s Day?” This year Mr A asked me the question and my reply was that I didn’t really mind if we missed it this year, honestly I really don’t. Getting a bunch of flowers or a heart-shaped chocolate is lovely, but I would much prefer to receive them on a normal day just because it was thought of, not because it’s Valentine’s Day and it’s romantic law.(If however I am surprised by chocolate I wouldn’t complain at all.)

However all the talk of Valentine’s Day and Valentine’s Day School Discos got me thinking, who is St Valentine?

Well to be honest history isn’t quite sure and there are lots of candidates, but it’s believed to be a temple priest who was beheaded near Rome by Claudius II for helping christian couples to get married. If St Valentine had renounced his Christian faith he could have saved himself, however he remained strong to the end and was beheaded for his crimes.  When I’d finished reading about St Valentine my first thoughts were, wow! Valentine was all about love but he was actually really very brave.

So if you fancy an alternative way to celebrate Valentine’s Day you could do something brave today in memory of St Valentine or help a loved one to be brave, everyone has a certain little something that they don’t really dare to do, even something as simple as making a phone call can be brave.

Did you celebrate today?