Valentine’s Day is a swell holiday. Nobody’s cheap and everybody seems in a good mood. There is no seasonal gloom attached to it – only candy, hearts, flowers, and absinthe.

No remorse, no regrets. Well, the absinthe might be responsible for that.
But Valentine’s Day always provides an electrifying anticipation in the air. This has the earthy sniff of erotica about it. If you have a problem with St. Valentine’s Day, well then, you likely have problems in other areas. It’s not a religious holiday per se, but it is named in honor of a saint. A happy agreement between piety and promiscuity.

Do you know why saints have to be dead to be saints? They can’t contest the official biography. Or get on The View.

My way of celebrating Valentine’s Day is to reflect on the lives of the saints. There are the famous ones like St. Sebastian, the patron saint of archery. Perhaps Cupid used him for target practice. The famous painting of him, perforated by dozens of arrows, leaves us aquiver.

There is St. Augustine, famous for his Confessions. They were later ruled inadmissible in a court of law because Augie was not read his Miranda rights while being interrogated.

You recall St. Joan of Arc, tricked by the British to recant her unusually intimate communication with God. Later, in protest, she donned men’s clothing – though she had pledged to give up dashing to the haberdashery. In her butch attire she was declared a “lapsed heretic.” What is a lapsed heretic? But she wore some cool threads. Her persecution would never have happened in San Francisco. She would have gone directly to canonization – or been driven post-haste right to the runway at Macy’s Fashion Passport Show at Fort Mason. Perhaps Joan would even own her own reality TV show and be seen dancing at the Starlight Room with Harry Denton. There’s a fun-filled mingling of piety and promiscuity.

There are the more obscure saints such as St. Humbert, noted for his generosity toward young girls. He later came to the attention of the Holy See when he designed the first Catholic girl’s school uniform: short pleated and plaid skirts with a solid white top. In fact, Humbert was canonized after the Holy See came to visit to see for himself.

There is St. Commodious, a terribly friendly fellow known for his gregariousness. Always eager to please, we get from him the terms “accommodate” and “commode.” We can explain the latter. When Pope Xavier Cugat, the so-called “dancing mad pontiff of Perugia,” learned of the amicable cleric’s penchant for leaving the seat down in the WC – a practice previously unknown – he immediately began the canonization process. Some theologians contend this action was made at the passionate insistence of several of the Pope’s wives.

There was St. Hyginus, who little is known about except that he apparently suffered with what is known today as obsessive-compulsive behavior – in his case, washing his hands dozens of times a day. The historian Herodotus wrote, “Hyginus, a very clean man, just snapped one day when his favorite slattern told him an old joke with the punch line, ‘When I met you, I thought you were a Greek god – now you look like a goddamned Greek.’” The unfortunate girl was put to death – ironically drowned in extra virgin oil. Hyginus later washed his hands of the whole matter.

St. Hunna was known as the “holy washerwoman.” Under a Papal bull, a string of Laundromats offering hot and cold running holy water was named after her.
Speaking of hot and cold, St. Mercurius was a man who couldn’t make up his mind. He was a Roman guard, charged with accompanying Christian prisoners to their execution. Sometimes he’d let them go, then have second thoughts and recapture them. Even then he couldn’t decide whether to use a sword or a scabbard to dispatch them to their reward. Encountering an epiphany one day (circa 250 C.E.), Mercurius was moved to release the lions from the Coliseum, thus saving the lives of dozens of Christians. But he forgot that his wife had earlier packed his lunch, stuffing his pockets with Ethiopian blood sausage. The ravenous beasts quickly picked up the scent and summarily tore Mercurius to pieces.

Little is known of St. Loman, except that he converted to Christianity when he realized his kids and his wife hated him. He died a failed bible salesman – the first one in the ancient world. Today he is known as the patron saint of fallen arches and of the small commission.

But it was St. Valentine who eventually made the leap over that border between the secular and the sacred. He reminds us that sharing love is never really old-fashioned. That’s why we have Craigslist. And it’s very busy today thanks to St. Valentine. You gotta love the guy. He has a quiver of arrows, accurate in design, all for the sake of reminding people what it is like to be in love. We’ve been quivering ever since.

Happy St. Valentine’s Day young lovers, wherever you are.