The Festival of Hearts.

The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts, all on a summer’s day.
The Knave of Hearts, he stole the tarts, and took them clean away.

So on this very auspicious Valentine’s day - lucky, because it falls both on the Chinese calendar’s Lunar New Year celebrations for the Year of the Dog, as well as on the Catholic Lenten calendar that leads up to Christmas. Today is Ash Wednesday.

And as such, we celebrate and pivot all festivities on marking all three. In one day, the concept of being able to traditionally not eat, or drink, or take in anything excessive, to mark the beginning of the Lenten sacrifice. This is reserved for the Fridays of Lent, as well as the Good Friday on the Holy Week running up to Easter Sunday, but as it is, the sacrifices now run the gamut of giving up your most favourite activity - put down all social media gadgets, or do not eat your favourite meal, or possibly as in some societies - they do not wear their teeth (their false teeth, the dentures are a sign of wealth, and something towards both vanity, and pleasure - inconsiderate of those who have nothing to eat, and are not able or allowed to with human limitations or restrictions).

Ash Wednesday - is a celebration of burning all the palm sunday branches used in last year’s beginning to the Holy Week, down to ashes. The greyish powder is then used as a Catholic symbol of sacrifice, smeared on the forehead of all catechists 8 and above - where it seals the promise to “go and sin no more” in a similar promise to the body of christ (the flat round coin-shaped bread that goes on your tongue, and not chewed but melted until the end of prayer) .

Another pivot would adjoin the concept of being able to handle a bevy of enjoyment which is understandably equivalent to both the Easter and Christmas traditions, that hold the Lunar New Year - where the Moon signifies the changing of the calendar, and another animal presides over the quantifiable outcomes of luck in the coming year. This is celebrated by the colour red, by giving away red envelopes in denominations of $8 dollars, for lucky children, and eating snacks, and lighting candles while paying daily visits to all your elders and relations - who welcome you with open arms, and are happy to bestow (higher denominations) of enveloped gold-flecked, red-enveloped luck.

The most flitting and least traditional, would be the very joyous occasion of the celebration of Hearts. St. Valentine’s Day - which was the reason to give chocolates, flowers, and other gifts of adornment to loved ones - in their commemoration of their symbolic love for you. In these, you are given the best bunches of roses, best truffles, and the most elegant of dinners. This has become rather the most “commercial” of the three - albeit, the most organised - as they are befitting of any tradition - whether you were Catholic, Christian, Chinese, or simply in the red and have a bit of time on your hands for all this accomodation of revelry.

There is no science to explain it, which is why traditions pass from generation to generation - the meaning is in the intrinsic passing of the baton, and embark as a permeable remembrance of what life had been like, as you had walked the earth in the time of you, and your actual physical beating heart, had given you.

So, whatever the source of denominator, revelry and scientology you are grounded in for today, remember the reasons, and how you are urged to make use of your limited time, and be the best for another in the same ordeal of having limited, finite stream measure. The choice of where to put the sands in the hourglass of time, are always yours.

And you must use them well. HAPPY DAY!