It is St. Valentine's Day! I still have memories of those days at the university, when on such an occasion the guys will shout "kokoooooooookokoo" on spotting their female counterparts in their red apparels. With the passing of the years this day's celebration has increasingly seen some overwhelming awareness, making its celebration attract all the grandeur that goes with it in recent times.

American culture, for instance, remained amazingly holiday-free until the nineteenth century. Although there were various local celebrations, there was none of major national prominence.

Not until the grand success of the commercialization of St. Valentine's Day in the mid-nineteenth century did American culture embrace the market version of holidays we now take for granted. The day has become one of the largest commercial holidays in the United States.

It ranks right up there with Christmas, Easter, and Halloween with annual retail sales grossing well over three billion dollars per year.

Questions

I thought this celebration was un-African or un-Ghanaian but a foreign phenomenon; thus, I have been fascinated by how Ghanaians have colonized and corrupted the celebration of the day. When one stops to consider Valentine's Day, a number of questions can come to mind: What attracts people to this once obscure holiday?

Is it the opportunity to send a loved one a bouquet of flowers or a box of chocolates? Is it the novelty of allowing children to hand out Valentine cards to their parents or to their friends at school? Is it a license for immorality?

It is amazing the way the significance of the day has been misconstrued all over the world, including Ghana.

Sexual promiscuity

Like the relief that prisoners of war feel when they are released after long years of incarceration, St. Valentine's Day, over the years has seen incremental levels of sexual promiscuity among both the young and old. As if it is an implosion (if not an explosion) within those people, most of the beaches and drinking spots become the nerve centers for much of this exercise, the impact we feel, only, later.

A friend of mine once put it bluntly in an email to me: "Today is Valentines Day and I can predict that in nine months' time our hospitals would record an all-time in high birth rates because there would be a lot of waist exercises this night.

There would be massive levels of promiscuity and those who would be contracting HIV/AIDS have just signed their death warrant." In as much he may have not couched his email in any proverbial language; I feel he captured the essence of my piece.

History of "Friend of Lovers"

St. Valentine's Day has been corrupted. There are several legends associated with the name given to this celebration, yet its namesake had little or nothing to do with the romantic notions associated with the holiday today. There have been valentines from the beginning of time.

Yet, oddly enough, the man who originally offered himself as a valentine had nothing so romantic in mind." History has it that during the third century, Emperor Claudius, who was nicknamed "The Cruel" due to his many bloody military campaigns, outlawed marriage for young men because he believed being single would help them be better soldiers. Since only single men were pressed into the Roman military, many eligible males avoided the army by getting married.

A Bishop named Valentine, defying Emperor Claudius, secretly married young couples by candlelight, but eventually was caught. Claudius had him put in prison to await his fate. While the Bishop was in prison, legend tells that young people visited Valentine offering him flowers and notes. These notes described their shared passion for love over war and earned Valentine the title, "Friend of Lovers."

Society has, thus, been unfair to the man for whom this day has been associated. The day is for an expression of love and not what you think. People should not behave as if they have been carrying a baggage for so long a time and have only have been waiting for such an occasion to dump it somewhere or on someone. It will only be fair to the one about whom the day is celebrated that "romance-less" love takes precedence over indiscriminate sexual activities.

Celebration of love

St. Valentine's Day should be a celebration of love, and who says that love is only the romantic kind celebrated in pop ballads? Love can exist in all kinds of relationships. There are relationships between friends, parents and, children. The idea that each of us must go through life paired up like the animals on the ark is toxic.

We should be celebrating the occasion if we have to with the down trodden and less fortunate. We should be visiting the health institutions and children's homes instead of wasting our lives.

At a time that the HIV/AIDS pandemic has reared its ugly head we will have to intensify the culture of moral responsibility in our communities, at our places of work, and in schools as this will determine the destiny of our country.

However, in an era where the culture of self-control and discipline have no place in our moral lives, as a nation, we could use such an occasion to sensitize and emphasize the importance of abstinence and condom use in both HIV prevention and the reduction of unintended pregnancies.

Some societies have even declared an HIV/AIDS awareness week. We can take advantage. However, I am glad that, already, some religious leaders have seized the opportunity but other NGO's must also act fast.

St. Valentine's Day celebration has been tainted with so much immorality. It is not a license to sexual freedom; it is not a license to predictable death; it is about true love; it is about commitment to honesty, peace, unity, sharing, a fight for freedom, a fight against political vendetta, and a fight against injustice. Life is short, but precious.