What is Love?
A group of 4 to 10-year-olds was asked, “What does love mean?” Here’s a selection of their wise and wonderful replies…from the mouths of babes!
1. “When my grandma got arthritis, she couldn’t bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandpa does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That’s love.” (Rebecca – age 8)
2. “When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth.” (Billy – age 7)
3. “Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other.” (Karl – age 5)
4. “Love is sharing even if you think you don’t have enough.” (Chrissie – age 6)
5. “Love is like medicine, and hate is like poison. If everybody knew that, we’d all be happy.” (Keisha – age 8)
6. “Love is what makes you smile when you’re too tired to think.” (Terri – age 9)
7. “Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK.” (Danny – age 7)
8. “Love is the quiet sound in the room when the people you care about are all together.” (Luis – age 10)
9. “Love is believing that God understands that my prayers are my way of helping others…not just myself.” (Carolina, age 8)
10. “When you love somebody, it doesn’t matter if they’re gone for a little while or forever. You still find a way to love them.” (Karen – age 7)
11. “My mommy said they adopted me because they wanted one more way to grow love in our family. She said I grew in her heart, not in her belly.” (Hector – age 9)
12. “Love is when you tell a boy you like his shirt, and then he wears it everyday.” (Noelle – age 7)
13. “Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other much too well.” (Tommy – age 8)
14. “During my piano recital, I was on a stage and I was scared. I looked at all the people watching me and I saw my daddy waving and smiling. I wasn’t scared anymore. Love does that.” (Cindy – age 8)
15. “My mommy loves me more than anybody. You don’t see anyone else kissing me to sleep at night, do you?” (LaShonda – age 6)
16. “Love is when Daddy looks at me and calls me his little flower that’s always in bloom. You get the picture.” (Elaine – age 9)
17. “Love is when Mommy sees a picture of my family on the wall and stops to look a little extra long look at it.” (Chris – age 7)
18. “Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day.” (Mary Ann – age 5)
19. “You really shouldn’t say ‘I love you’ unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People might forget.” (Jessica – age 8)
And the final one to warm anybody’s heart:
20. The winner was a four-year-old child whose next-door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife. Upon seeing the man cry one cloudy morning, the little boy went into the old gentleman’s yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there. When his Mother asked him what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy said, “Nothing, really. I just sat by him and helped him cry.”
Was there a Saint Valentine?
Today, Valentine’s Day is perhaps the most secular holiday named for a Catholic saint. What started as a commemoration of a third-century religious martyr is now a commercialized tradition of romance and candy. But even digging back into the holiday’s past, it’s unclear exactly which St. Valentine was the cause for celebration in the first place.
There were up to three saints named Valentine who were active in the third century CE: Religious scholars have found documentation of a man in Africa, a Roman priest, and the bishop of Terni in Umbria, Italy.
There’s very limited information on the African St. Valentine, and the other two have enough parallels in their mythology that they might actually have been the same person — either that, or their legends borrow heavily from one another. Both were beheaded in Rome on February 14 in either 269 CE or 270 CE on the orders of Emperor Claudius II Gothicus, and were buried on the same road. And both supposedly healed a child of their jailer from blindness, inspiring an entire household to convert to Christianity.
The Italian St. Valentines also were rumored to perform secret weddings, although that element of the tale was probably added later, since the day wasn’t originally associated with romance. While St. Valentine is still recognized by the Catholic Church, his feast day was removed from the General Roman Calendar, the liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church, in 1969. According to that calendar, February 14 currently commemorates St. Cyril and St. Methodius, Byzantine brothers known for preaching in Central Europe in the ninth century CE.
Saints recognized by the Catholic Church
10,000+
Valentine’s Day spending in the U.S. in 2024 $25.8 billion
So if St. Valentine wasn’t a particularly romantic figure, why is Valentine’s Day so lovey-dovey?
For that, you can thank 14th-century writer Geoffrey Chaucer, author of The Canterbury Tales. His poem “The Parlement of Foules,” written to celebrate the engagement of King Richard II and Anne of Bohemia in 1382, described birds choosing their mates on St. Valentine’s Day in a satire of courtly love. Soon, members of the nobility used the bird-mating season as an excuse to write love notes, and the tradition evolved into the major shopping holiday we see today.