Carrot Cake, Al Capone and Cupid

Here’s my most recent commentary in Brazos Monthly magazine, a publication of The Facts newspaper. This one is about our shortest month, which is right around the corner, and the holiday that falls in its middle.    © 2024 Ron Rozelle

February looms close on the horizon, that second batter-up in the rotation which is not only the shortest of months but one of the least busy (or cluttered, depending on your perspective) with holidays.

The two biggies are Valentine’s Day and President’s Day. There used to be three, but Lincoln’s and Washington’s birthdays were merged into President’s Day. I guess they had to make way for other important designations, like Ground Hog Day (February 2^nd), National Carrot Cake Day (3^rd), National Bagel and Lox Day (9^th), and World Bartender Day (24^th; apparently those essential souls warrant a wider celebration than a single nation’s).  A multitude of such days are in play, but my favorite is Read to Your Child Day on February 14^th. As a self-proclaimed and totally devoted champion of literacy in general and reading in particular I believe that one should be officially proclaimed.

In spite of the fact that it has so few recognized holidays, many important and memorable things have of course occurred in some Februarys down the centuries. Here are a few, compliments of my crack research ream (Google.com), in no particular order.  

Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook (I’m beginning to wonder if that was a good thing or not), The Salem Witch Hunts began (I wonder if the Puritans had a pep rally to get things going), Socrates was sentenced to death in Athens, The Boy Scouts were founded, Mary Queen of Scots lost her head (literally), in 600 A.D. Pope Gregory proclaimed ‘God Bless You’ as a theologically admissible response to a sneeze, in 1993 the first explosion at the World Trade Center occurred killing six people (my wife Karen and I were in New York the day before and skipped a tour of that building because I was hungry for lunch), the board game Monopoly appeared in 1935 during the Great Depression, when play money was the only currency available for most people, and gangster Al Capone’s Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre took place on February 14^th, 1929 in Chicago. The same day, you might remember if you’re paying attention, is now set aside for reading to children.

And it’s Saint Valentine’s Day that I want to focus on today. Not the massacre, but the day itself. I’ve always been a bit confused about what exactly we’re supposed to be celebrating, other than the profits that greeting card and candy companies must rake in. It’s a nice opportunity for letting your significant other know you’re thinking of them, but surely that can, and should, transpire on more than one day a year.

When I was in elementary school up in Oakwood we were expected to exchange Valentine cards with our classmates on February 14^th, or on the weekday closest to it if it fell on a weekend.  Which meant we had to sign cards for everybody in the first and second grades since Miss Francis taught both groups in the same classroom.  Then we had to do it again in the third and fourth grades with Miss Irwin.

Those tiny cards were decorated with hearts and plump little winged cherubs wielding bows and arrows. So I concluded the day had to have something to do with either love or archery (I might not have been the sharpest pencil in the box up in Oakwood). Then somebody filled me in that the angel shot the arrow at unsuspecting people to make them fall in love. With whoever was close at hand, I supposed.

I pondered how the day came to be what it now is for long enough to finally write an article about it more than a few years ago in my weekly columnist era. I began by doing some research (Google, again) about the man it’s named for. Here’s the scant information I came up with in my little corner of the Sunday paper …  

I’m still a bit confused about what we’re supposed to give our attention to every fourteenth day of February. Other than reading to children, which I wholeheartedly endorse.

Anyway, have yourself a happy Valentine’s Day, and God bless you (in case you sneeze).