Today is best remembered as romantic holiday named for St. Valentine, a Roman martyr who lived a few hundred years after Christ and about whom very little is known (except that he died on Feb. 14). I prefer to remember this as the birthday of a saint — St. Gaetano Catanoso, born Feb. 14, 1879 in the village of Chorio in southern Italy. Happy birthday, Gaetano. (The video here was shot in Calabria last March by Michael Frierson, a film professor at UNC-Greensboro)

The day is named for a saint, but here’s some good advice just the same on this romantic holiday.

Actually,  the saint I remember fondly on February 14 is St. Gaetano Catanoso, my cousin, born on that day in 1879 in the village of Chorio in the region of Calabria, Italy.