Regular readers know that silly calendar coincidences trigger compulsive versification in me the way a strobe light sets off an epileptic seizure. It ain’t pretty to look at and witnesses are embarrassed for the victim but can not tear their eyes from the spectacle.
This time it is the quite contradictory urges of Valentine’s Day, fixed on February 14 way back in 496 CE when Pope Gelasius I was regularizing the calendar of feast days. He assigned the date to a legendary early Christian Saint of whom literally nothing was known. Ash Wednesday, the floating observance of the first day of Lent and the second most solemn day of the year after Good Friday. One observation celebrates romantic love with all of the urges and excess that implies while the other calls for penance, fasting, and a solemn rejection of the temptations of the flesh that might detract attention from the coming sacrifice of Christ.
A guy could get whiplash trying to cover both bases in 24 short hours.
Valentine’s Day/Ash Wednesday
February 14, 2024
The convergence of Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday last happened in 2018. It happens again in 2029, but usually it’s rarer than that. It won’t occur again in this century.
Mark the day for failed love—
abandonment, betrayal, cruelty,
abuse, brokenness, contempt.
Wear scarlet, sack cloth optional
dine alone.
Give up dreams
for the season.
—Patrick Murfin
I had a different take on the subject the last time it happened just six years ago.
Valentine’s Day/Ash Wednesday
February 14, 2018
Doth the thumb smear on Cupid’s brow,
dour penance and virtuous sacrifice
subdue ardor or blunt the arrows
from his quiver?
Or doth affection triumph after all,
lust work its wanton magic, pagan heart
smother sanctimony?
—Patrick Murfin
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