love is in the air....

Every year year on February 14th, St. Valentine's Day, gifts of flowers, chocolates and terms of endearment will be delivered to loved ones all around the world. Nearly every delivery will be met with happiness, whether the arrangement of flowers is artistically unique, or a simple, single long-stemmed rose; or if the chocolates are white, dark or filled with cream or nuts people will be delighted to recieve these tokens of love. Why are these symbols so well accepted by society? Becuase I am opinionated on certain things, I'd like to say, it's because WE as humans created the enigma that drives these silly traditions.

Love and passion are often metaphorically referred to as 'fire'. So we use fire in communicating the feelings of when a romance when it is "kindled", the "burning desire" or the "flames of passion", need occasional "fuel" to keep them alive, lest they fade to "dying embers".

Food and fuel are metaphorically interchangeable, "feed the fire","Fuel for Kids". It would then come as NO surprise to find metaphorical equivalents of "food for love" in the 'sacrificial' process of Valentines gift giving. Everything in love could be construed as metaphorical.

Chocolates are full of sugar, and sugar full of energy. So full, that chocolate bar manufacturer Mars now refers to them as energy bars. What?! Their recent commercials are sexual, and energetic. Why not? The hormone phenethylamine (PEA) abounds in chocolate, which produces the same sensation as being in love, and this hormone is required for a womans survival. Chocolates, then, are fuel for both the mental and physical aspects of romance. Small wonder that men offer it to women by the heavy boxful.

Flowers grow in the spring. This time for reproduction among plants, is also quite popular among animals. Humans call this "spring fever". That we give a gift that visually suggests that love is in season is only part of the passion-feeding story. Flowers have a scent that is the essential ingredient of perfume - perfume, which, according to virtually every advertisement, somehow commands a sexual response. Pheromones, a chemical "your place or mine?" are thought to be the means of expressing sexual-appetite in both successful perfumes and successful body odours. Finally, we find ourselves giving specifically roses, flowers which are coloured red, on Valentine's day, a colour choice which, on further reflection, seems no coincidence at all.

Our very symbols of passionate love... the hearts and the colour red - universally fuel our Valentine's Day cards. When passionately aroused, our hearts will pound, filling our faces with blood and readying us for the passionate expressions indicative of joyful bliss. The rhythm of the heart echoes in the romantic music playing on every radio station destined to make the single person lonely, and crave distraction. The red and the heart are no metaphor. They are a direct representation of the physical effects of passion, food for primal thought.

Valentine's Day is a day that we make offerings to our loves... not our loved ones. Love is treated as a God, which, though taking no physical form, has all the demands of a living creature. Chemically, we feed the passion with the pheromones found in flowers and perfume, and the hormone found in chocolate. Visually, we give the sexual "ready and willing" signal with the colour red and flowers. Energetically, we provide the bounty of sweets for the sweet. Physically, we show a heart and listen to music, to bring to mind the throbbing sensation of passionate love. Words of deepest sentiment will fill our Valentine's cards, expressing every word a soul needs to hear to survive: "You're special", "I love you" and "I need you". In all, our gifts reflect the things of love so well, that all they need is a body to possess. Love is our master, and saviour, and we must make sacrifice to this God on Valentine's Day.

Because if we don't...