What words to send to so many friends, something to soothe without being "Hallmarky," something to embrace so many levels of relationship?...such were the the thoughts that traveled my mind when I arrived at this:

The Gestalt Prayer

I do my thing, and you do your thing.
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations
And you are not in this world to live up to mine.
You are you, and I am I,
And if by chance, we find each other, it's beautiful.
If not, it can't be helped.

~ Fritz Perls

Happy Valentine's Day to everybody!

And thank you for being YOU!

Lovers and the greeting card industry may have Geoffrey Chaucer to thank for
the holiday that warms the coldest month. Although reference books abound
with mentions of Roman festivals from which Valentine's Day may derive, Jack
B. Oruch has shown that no evidence supports these connections and that
Chaucer was probably the first to link the saint's day with the custom of
choosing sweethearts. No such link has been found before the writings of
Chaucer and several literary contemporaries who also mention it, but after
them the association becomes widespread. It seems likely that Chaucer, the
most imaginative of the group, invented it. The fullest and perhaps earliest
description of the Valentine's Day tradition occurs in Chaucer's Parlement of
Foules, composed around 1380, which takes place “on Seynt Valentynes
day,/Whan every foul cometh there to chese [choose] his make [mate].”

I have read elsewhere that the Church invented St. Valentine to take the place of the Lupercalia, which were too much fun to be allowed.

How about a movement to bring back the Lupercaiia?

From today's "Ann Landers" syndicated column:

Dear Ann Landers: I realize you don't specialize in cultural history, but I thought you might like to know more about the origins of Valentine's Day.

St. Valentine's Day began with a pagan fertility festival, Lupercal, held on Feb. 15. In the year 496, Pope Gelasius created a feast day in memory of St. Valentine, a martyred 3rd Century priest, and placed it on Feb. 14, hoping early Christians would celebrate their romantic traditions a day early and dedicate them to the saint instead of the Roman love goddess Juno. The feast day stuck, but the romantic holiday didn't.

The romantic holiday finally took hold in medieval England. Geoffrey Chaucer, famous for writing "The Canterbury Tales," got together with his fellow poets and invented a new holiday to lift the people's spirits. In a poem titled "The Parliament of Fowls," Chaucer claimed that all the birds in the world choose their mates on St. Valentine's Day. Shakespeare refers to Chaucer's poem in his play "A Midsummer Night's Dream," and gives the name "Valentine" to characters in two other romantic comedies. Ophelia, in "Hamlet," sings that she wants to "be your Valentine."

It all started with the two greatest love poets in the English language. -- Steven Anderson, adjunct professor, Department of English, Gettysburg College, Pa.

Dear Ann: The feast of St. Valentine has been associated with romance for nearly 1,000 years. King Henry VIII made Valentine's Day a national holiday. Love tokens were frequently given on the feast, almost always anonymously. By the 1800s, the so-called "comic" valentines appeared. Sent anonymously, they were a form of social criticism, cruelly pointing out people's faults.

My information came from Nancy Rosin, the vice president of the National Valentine Collector's Association. -- Tony Hyman, CBS' "The Saturday Early Show," author of "Trash or Treasure Guide of Buyers"