CULTURE REGENERATION: VALENTINE DAY CELEBRATION, A CULTURAL WORM IN A COCOON

By Nnabugwu Chizoba

 

Corpse of Nanchin, allegedly murdered in Jos, by her lover, Dele, for refusing to be with him on Val Day

Love, death and time are streams of consciousness depicting the random flow of thoughts, emotions, memories, reminiscences and associations through the veil of human experiences on earth. They are abstract terms possessing no tangible quality or quantity. They are a ridicule of human weakness, vice or folly, and/or literary thoughts associated with personal and inter-personal grid of ideas that represent Mans emotions, moods, intervals or space.

Valentine Day is a memoriam of a martyred Saint. From every indication, the event has permeated the fabric of the society. From available records, Valentine Day, as an event began in Europe during the Nineteen Century. Since then, it has been advocated by poets, artists and narrators of Verisimilitude - the appearance of being real or semblance of truth.

Death is a material entity that terminates the physical property of Man, a theatre of the absurd. Time is the meter of measuring epochs, seasons and period of events.

In the medieval period, the threat in battle was bad enough that Knights and great power symbols invented, adopted and legitimized the use of images, tools and suit of armour of helmet, shield and hauberk made of countless riveted iron rings to protect loved ones through defense in wars.

The Anglo-Norman entity that resulted from the Norman Conquest through the sacrifice of lives for the love of England brought the English into mainstream European civilization, which included feudalism. So, the Knights chronicled the use of armour and the crossbow to engage their rivalry in wars and were made vulnerable to their adversaries because of the extra-ordinary dangerous features of the armoury.

For the protection of one’s family, country and interest, the Knights put their lives on the stake. Apart from the dangers of war, it was a common knowledge that the armour itself could be fatal, causing death from suffocation, heart even drowning.

You probably recognize some ways you could apply these insights to life today. In the interest of defense, public interest, safety and public order and the urgency to protect the rights and freedom of other people prove for rethinking and a new consciousness.

We salute the gallantry of the Red Cross, Armed Forces, the medical Corps and other emergency agencies for their love and commitment for the saving and/or protection and security of lives and property in the periods of emergency and other challenges.

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Valentine Day is about sacrifice, commitment and selflessness in service, and to humanity. It covers a wide range of topics including good works, self-discipline, friendship, true knowledge, prudence and genuine response to the need of other people. Without sounding unnecessarily modest, St Valentine epitomizes complementarity of ethical concern, love – genuine, total, faithful and true, equality in rights and responsibility and mutual understanding.

St Valentine Day is the practice of the cultured and enlightened to recognize feminine self-fulfillment and not exploitation of the female folk in whatever shades. It is the recognition of the personality, dignity and right of the individual and invaluable dignity of the less privileged in the society, including the physically challenged, down trodden and orphans.

The times are gone when the practice of nudity and human sacrifice are dubbed as relevant cultural relics. Times are also extinct when people erroneously undertake the search of a good future in the dusk. We of the contemporary era need to remind ourselves of the rich cultural elements that bind the society over millennia of years. Clearly invoking and advocating modification, advancement and adaptation of service, loyalty and effective structures and norms, not an antiquated, out-modeled, outdated and ossified structures and systems.

There is no doubt, therefore, about the sort of social engineering that our developing context reality want. It is not a system of dis-service but of humble and relevant service, not a culture of frozen status-quo but capable of adequate response to modern development in taste, fashion, orderliness, etiquette and environmental sanitation.

It is most unfortunate and tragic that at a time most critical for the adjustment of the intellectual habit, cultural revival and reformation of the society through a deliberate change of heart in political, diplomatic and security requirements, the people swayed by follies advocated and scheme degenerative interests.

Valentine Day has been battered and misconstrued as a festival of environmental violation, marketing of nudity and pornography, vocational misdemeanors, abuses, and childish taste for all manners of vices.  

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