Valentine's Day and Heart Healthy Fundraiser

Between Valentine’s Day and National Heart Month, February is a good time to take heart and students at Saints Cyril and Methodius School in Deer Park did so in fun and charitable ways these past few weeks.

It is purported that the roots of St. Valentine’s Day lie in the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia, which was celebrated in February. For 800 years, Romans had dedicated this day to the god Lupercus. They would hold a lottery on Lupercalia, in which a man would draw the name of a young woman, whom he would keep as companion for the year. Pope Gelasius I later changed this to drawing saints’ names, whose characteristics the drawer would emulate for the year. The history of saints named Valentine is a bit muddled with many varied stories of which one the feast day was after. It was this confusion over the origin of St. Valentine’s Day that led the Catholic Church, in 1969, to drop St. Valentine’s Day from the Roman calendar of official, worldwide Catholic feasts and leave liturgical celebration to local calendars. The most common modern day stories involve St. Valentine and the writing of love letters, the tradition of which remains today.

SSCM’s local celebration of the day involved sharing the love with family and friends. Second graders had an opportunity to showcase their best handwriting and art skills, writing beautiful love letters to family members, which incorporated candy hearts and their fondest feelings for parents, grandparents, sisters and brothers.

Students in higher grades focused on love in other ways, studying the life of St Valentine, where the idea of sending love notes started, contemplating the day historically devoted to love and what it means to them. Their projects included writing up their own “recipes for love” and students’ thoughts on the subject were wide and varied. With their final projects posted and topped off with the beloved 1 Corinthians 13 passage, feelings that “Love is patient, Love is kind” permeated the second floor of SSCM even more than usual.

Rounding out their acts of heart, students at SSCM participated in the American Heart Association’s Jump Rope for Heart fundraiser for children suffering with heart disease. Raising nearly $1,500, participants designed posters depicting heart healthy activities and foods, then went on to pump their own hearts by springboarding, climbing, playing double dutch and more!