There is no doubt about it, more people will be celebrating St Valentine today than St Cyril and St Methodius. Sales of red roses, chocolates and champagne will soar while the religiously inclined will be left feeling like bubble-busters as they keep their Lenten fast and ponder the saintly brothers' work for Church Slavonic and the liturgy — so dull by comparison. For the Church's calendar to be so out of step with contemporary culture is a modern phenomenon. Many of the earliest liturgical commemorations were of pagan festivals Christianized, just as many Christian holy places were built on the site of pagan ones. Gregory the Great's advice to Augustine of Canterbury was typical: do not destroy the shrines of the Angles but make them Christian. Can we make Valentine's Day a little more Christian without making it dull? Donne springs to mind.