If you’re anything like me, dates hold meaning and significance.  If you’re anything like my wife, Christa, dates are sometimes an inconvenience, and some dates should be ignored as if they never happened.  Take our birthdays, as an example.  I don’t need a big party for my birthday every year.  But I do love celebrating and being celebrated.  That’s because I think there’s significance in the fact that we were born, and we have purpose.  For Christa, she would be quite happy to skip her birthday and move on with life.  Not because she doesn’t appreciate the significance of (her) birthday, but she’d prefer to ignore that fact that life is passing by so swiftly and aging is not necessarily a pretty thing!  In so far as celebrating my birthday, she’s just fine with that.  As for hers, she’d do better with an un-birthday.  Having said that, though, she’s grateful that I’m a gift-giver.  Being on the receiving end of my gift-giving seems to have softened the sledge-hammer effect that birthdays have had on her since we’ve been married.

Another meaningful highlight for us is our wedding anniversary.  We love to pamper and treat ourselves in celebration of the significance of that milestone.

When it comes to commercial holidays, though, I have to admit that I’m somewhat less eager to participate in the feeding frenzy that is fuelled by the commercial world.

As a couple we do get somewhat carried away with Christmas.  But this is also a significant season for us in our faith-journey, so we couple it closely with the Gift that the season celebrates. 

As for Halloween, we tend to create an alternative that serves our community and neighbourhood a little differently.  We offer trick or treaters a break in their neighbourhood journey by providing a welcome cup of hot chocolate and a fire pit for roasting wieners or marshmallows in our front yard.  This also gives us opportunity to try to meet and engage with the parents on-lookers as much as the scavenging kids.

Then there’s Valentine’s Day. 

Why do we need a reason to show love on only ONE significant day of the year?  Is this merely a day when some individuals can legitimately pluck up the courage to express their undying love to an unsuspecting other?  Is it a commercial money-making racquet?  Or does it legitimately remind us to up the romantic ante on at least one day of the calendar year, if that’s not one’s normal bent?  Does St. Valentine have any idea what the repercussions were of what he supposedly started?  While many may be left lonely on this vulnerable occasion, still innumerable flowers will be picked, chocolate boxes packed, greeting cards written, jewelry given and proposals made. Whatever your experience of this day, may you know that you are valued and valuable.

Perhaps you will find encouragement in this love letter that has circled the globe for two decades. It has been an inspiration to many and a life-saver to many more. Whatever date is important to you, may you know that YOU’RE IMPORTANT.

Leave us your comments and feedback in the reply section below. We’d love to hear what dates are meaningful to you and why.