As of this writing, I have been writing this column for seven years, well over half a decade. In that time, I have written a lot on the month of February and in the month of February and I thought it would be fun to take a look back.

Now February has two things that almost everyone thinks about…Spring is around the corner and of course, Valentine’s Day. Both subject matter has made its way into this column, including me wishing I was in the Gulf still at this time of year rather than the cold (the very, very cold) Midwest:

 “As I sit here writing this it is currently seven degrees for a ‘high’ and soon two to four inches of snow will arrive. The extended forecast here in the Midwest says warmer weather will be here in less than a week, but right now I’m “Texas dreaming” on such a very cold Winter’s day.

    Soon the trees and other plants will experience their reawakening, the early morning will be filled with sunshine rather than darkness and people will escape their homes again with hardly a regretful thought about the cabin fever that preceded it.
    And I can feel like I finally moved away from the Arctic Circle for a few months as well.”

This year could be a bigger and better sequel as in the week I am writing this it was colder here in Chicago than some locations in Antarctica…next time you complain about a hot Texas Summer day, please clip out and keep this article to your fridge for a soothing reminder of how location can indeed be everything.

Of course February is about hot romance more than hot weather, and I think we have covered it pretty well over the years, from the history of the holiday’s origins:

I looked up the history of Valentine’s Day and discovered that in reality it was more about three Christian Martyrs with the name of Valentine, who became saints, than about love. It was not until a man by the name of Geoffry Chaucer wrote these lines in his 1382 work Parlement of Foules that the reference took on a more romantic note:

 “For this was Saint Valentine’s Day, when every bird cometh there to choose his mate.”

This poem was written to commemorate the one year anniversary of the engagement of King Richard II of England to Anne of Bohemia.

By the time 1797 rolled around, a company in England had started printing a book entitled The Young Man’s Valentine Writer, which contained a collection of verses and romantic drawings for young lovers to place in their own homemade Valentines. By the mid 19th century, the Valentine industry made 1.3 million pounds in England, somewhat sped along by lower postal rates which allowed more ‘racy’ subject matter to be sent privately to lovers as well as the first anonymous Valentines to be sent by secret admirers.

 “Of course now a days it is more then just personalized letters that we send out to our loved ones, we have our children pass them out to their classmates, we buy chocolates, jewelry and other gifts to go along with mass produced cards written by large companies with professional greetings writers expressing our most personal thoughts.”

However, before I leave you (and turn up the heat), please note that despite my ending the last memory on a snarky shot and the modern state of consumerism, I also have made my true feelings on love known here to the readers as well, and after going through seven years of February columns this passage stands out the most:

 “Hardest of all to achieve is the greatest love of all, which is self-love and should never be mistaken for arrogance or someone who appears on the outside to be perfect and have it all figured out, but might just not be all they seem to be.

    I suppose because from the time we are born till the time we all die we all look for some form of love, it makes it one of the most encompassing desires across the entire planet, taught by our prophets no matter the religion, at the heart of our wildest dreams of a perfect governmental system is the society based love we hope we one day achieve for our fellow man.

 Hopefully this soon will mean that as we all desire love in one of its many guises, it should become easy to both give that love out and receive it ourselves. “