Cypriot Valentine Extravaganza!

The teddy bears and Valentine heart cushions are out on roadside shops mingling with carnival masks and costumes. The radio stations are humming lovey-dovey tunes in an attempt to get everyone in the mood and also promising giveaway prizes like a two-night stay in a glitzy five-star hotel for the lucky couple.

 Wives will wait in anticipation for a bouquet of flowers or a naughty item of lingerie, probably the only present they will get from their husbands this year. Teenagers will secretly send a Valentine card or text message to the person they are besotted with, hoping for a response and looking starry-eyed in the classroom when they realize the feeling is mutual and down in the dumps for the rest of the year if it is young, careless unrequited love after all. Even the third generation will get carried away with the fun, buying the misses a box of chocolates or just an extra two cartons of washing powder, that is how far their love goes.In general it is a day to get carried away in a bubble of love, however deep or shallow that love may be.

Valentine's Day is tomorrow, on a Friday this year which means couples will make the most of it and for those who are single a chance to go out anyway. I can't help but think about the scene in the recent film Valentine's Day when all the singles get together for the 'I hate Valentine's Day' dinner at the local Indian which proves to be a great night, but the real message I got from that film is how big and tragic the day is made by all those who are single but also what a consumer heaven Valentine's Day is. It's all about the spending, how carried away you can get and that's how the Cypriot version has become too.

Modern love or cyber love is so different to love as it was in St. Valentine's time, the third century Roman saint associated with tomorrow's day. In those days it was all about courtly love, a secret exchange of love between members of the nobility, where the man tries to prove his worthiness to his mistress by acting bravely and honorably and by doing what the mistress desires and surprisingly in the end, sex  was not the goal or end result.There was something subtle and substantial about courtly love which ran deeper than a box of chocolates or a heart shaped cushion. It was real love, a binding contract with no small script at the bottom. If only we could take a piece from the original message that St. Valentine wanted to spread and add it to our 21st Century version, what a big difference that would make. Until then it's just another Cypriot Valentine extravaganza!