Every year, couples around the world celebrate Valentine’s Day, and this celebration hails back to at least the 5th century when Pope Gelasius declared February 14 St. Valentine’s Day. Who was Saint Valentine? There are three potential saints who might be linked to this holiday, but many of us favor one particular legend:

Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. 

“Valentine’s Day 2024: Origins, Background & Traditions.” History.com, January 19, 2024. https://www.history.com/topics/valentines-day/history-of-valentines-day-2.

On top of that, back in those Middle Ages, “it was commonly believed in France and England that February 14 was the beginning of birds’ mating season, which added to the idea that the middle of Valentine’s Day should be a day for romance.”

Now, some point out that the holiday may have been introduced to counteract or subsume the Roman fertility festival of Lupercalia, but let’s face it: by now, your average person has zero idea what Lupercalia is but certainly knows about Valentine’s Day. So I’m not bothered that the dates overlapped at some point or that the choice of date to celebrate St. Valentine might have involved practical considerations.

What I definitely like about the legend of St. Valentine’s is the emphasis not merely on romance but on marriage—the relationship that should include a lifetime of romance. You know, in between paying bills, doing laundry, and cleaning up after your kids. But that romance stuff can make the more boring stuff more doable.

With all that in mind, today I wanted to provide readers a quick-and-easy way to access my Valentine’s Day ideas. With quite a few posts, you may want to scroll through and look at titles before deciding which ones to click!

Remember my caveat, though: If Valentine’s Day is important to your spouse, it should be important to you…because your spouse is important.

How We Think About Valentine’s Day

• 6 Worst Things You Can Give for Valentine’s Day
• Do You Have to Celebrate Valentine’s Day?
• Is Valentine’s Day Too Much Pressure?
• Marriage Not Going Great? Go Ahead and Celebrate Valentine’s.
• Valentine’s Day for the Rest of Us

Gift Ideas

• What to Get Your Husband for V-Day
• 13 Sexy Valentine’s Gifts from Your Grocery Store
• 7 Sexy Valentine’s Gifts You Can Make
• “Go Big” Valentine’s Gifts for Your Spouse
• 8 Cool Valentine’s Gifts for Your Hot Hubby
• 8 Sweet Valentine’s Gifts for Your Spicy Wife
• 5 FREE Valentine’s Gifts for Your Spouse
• How to Make Your Valentine Gift Meaningful

What to Do for Valentine’s Day

• Hour-by-Hour Marital Intimacy on Valentine’s Day
• 7 Things You Should Say to Your Spouse on Valentine’s Day
• Does He Just Want Sex for Valentine’s Day?
• What I Really Want for Valentine’s Day (Maybe You Do Too)
• This Valentine’s Day, Give Extravagant Love

And For the Ultimate V-Day Gift…

That’s it! Maybe you can see why I didn’t write another ideas post this year. I have so many already! Best wishes celebrating in the way that you and your spouse do.

The post One Week Until Valentine’s Day (Are You Ready?) appeared first on Hot, Holy & Humorous.

Valentine’s Day is coming up! If you and/or your spouse enjoy commemorating this day, you need to decide on what you’ll do to celebrate. But what if you don’t have a lot of money to spend?

No worries! Here are five FREE Valentine’s gifts you can give your spouse.

1. Full-body massage

Our bodies love touch, and there’s something so wonderful about your spouse soothing your tight muscles with their hands.

Now, if you want to make this a real Valentine’s treat for all involved, remember: The higher drive spouse wants it to lead to sex; the lower drive spouse just wants a massage.

I’m not saying the lower-drive spouse won’t be responsive to the idea of sex on Valentine’s, but if they feel the whole time like you’re only giving the massage to get sex, it won’t be enjoyable. So focus on the massage for the time being, and make your sexual advances separate from that experience.

If you want to present a gift certificate for the massage, Canva has a bunch of templates you can use; although mostly tailored to businesses, they can easily be adapted to a massage for your spouse.

2. Clean house

I know that doesn’t sound romantic, but if you listened to our Christmas episode from the Sex Chat for Christian Wives podcast, you heard Gaye of Calm.Healthy.Sexy. say that one year the only gift she really wanted was a clean house. And I guarantee a large number of wives were nodding their heads, fully understanding that desire.

But it’s not just wives. In some couples, the husband is more of a neatnik.

If your spouse is  stressed by the mess, it’s a relief and a gift for them to have a clean house. Take a day or more off and focus on decluttering, deep cleaning, and/or decorating your home. Make it a space that feels welcoming and peaceful. And be sure to attend to the bedroom, creating a place conducive to lovemaking.

3. Love letter

Words are powerful. Proverbs 16:24 says, “Gracious words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.” Your words could be sweet to your spouse’s soul and healing to their bones. Why not put your words in a love letter, to be kept and cherished?

If you don’t know how to write a love letter, I have a section in my book, Hot, Holy, and Humorous: Sex in Marriage by God’s Design, simply titled: “How to Write a Love Letter.” Yep, I walk you through the components of a good love letter and give examples. You don’t have to be Shakespeare to write something your spouse will treasure for years. Just learn these tips, and you can write a letter your spouse will love getting for Valentine’s Day.

4. Homemade meal

If you don’t usually cook, be the one to prepare dinner. If you’re not much of a cook, choose something you can’t screw up, or find a simple recipe and follow it to the letter. Videos with a cooking demonstration can be particularly helpful.

If cooking is a shared activity or you typically get meals ready, how about breakfast in bed? Make sure you have a tray on which to serve the food so it’s easy for your spouse to eat. (Unless you’re planning to eat off each other…)

And consider presentation! When you go through Taco Bell, they shove your paper-wrapped burrito into a sack and hold it out the window to you. But when you go to a fancy restaurant, the chef displays the meal on a gleaming white plate with everything arranged perfectly and a garnish on the side. Give your spouse the fancy treatment, as much as you can (search “plating” on YouTube for ideas).

5. Sex

C’mon, you knew I had to say it. Sex is a shared activity that provides fun and pleasure, expresses love, and is free! It’s the gift God gave marriage that we re-gift to each other again and again.

But then how do you make this sexual experience feel special, worthy of qualifying as a Valentine’s Day gift? Try one or more of these:

• Create a romantic atmosphere, using tools like candles, flower petals, aromas, etc.
• Try something different or new. Again, my book has a lot of tips!
• Play a bedroom game, like Ultimate Intimacy or Sexy Truth or Dare.
• Have sex their way, putting the focus on your spouse’s enjoyment.
• Lengthen the time you’ll make love, drawing out pleasure with exploration and foreplay.

There you go. Five freebies for your Valentine’s Day.

For other gift ideas, check out:

13 Sexy Valentine’s Gifts from Your Grocery Store
7 Sexy Valentine’s Gifts You Can Make
“Go Big” Valentine’s Gifts for Your Spouse
8 Cool Valentine’s Gifts for Your Hot Hubby
8 Sweet Valentine’s Gifts for Your Spicy Wife

And remember, you can always gift one of my not-free-but-really-inexpensive books! On sale only through Valentine’s Day.

The post 5 FREE Valentine’s Gifts for Your Spouse appeared first on Hot, Holy & Humorous.

Call me too practical.

But I don’t think I’m unromantic. I enjoy romance! It just doesn’t always look like what other people’s romance looks like. Which makes me think we should extend our definition of romance in our marriages and for Valentine’s.

So what do I really want for Valentine’s Day? And are any of my ideas what you might want from your spouse?

A lingering kiss. I’m talking about that long, soft-lipped kiss that says your spouse’s lips are the only ones you ever want to touch. The type of kiss that feels sweet and passionate all at once. The sort of kiss a fairy tale prince or warrior would plant on his beloved when they finally escape certain peril and find one another.

A hand-picked bunch of flowers. Here in Texas, you’d better make sure you don’t pick any bluebonnets, because picking the state flower on public land is a crime. But there are plenty of places where you could likely yank a few naturally growing flowers from the ground or clip some from a bush and bring them home to your honey. Me? I have a weakness for daisies, which always strike me as a cheerful flower.

A slow dance in our bedroom. I love being held in my husband’s arms and swaying in tandem. We don’t need great dance moves or perfect rhythm or even music playing. Sometimes he just takes me in his arms and sings (off-key) while we dance and I swoon.

A sexy greeting card. There are some very clever greeting cards out there for spouses to exchange, and quite a few of them are flirty, suggestive, or even seductive. I like the idea of my husband picking out the perfect card to say “I want you always…starting right here and now.”

A sightseeing excursion. We’ve done dinner and/or a movie plenty. But my best memories with my husband are when we’ve traveled or gone to museums or visited local attractions. We walk hand-in-hand, see interesting sights, and enjoy great discussions. We spend quality time together. And we don’t do it often enough.

A handwritten letter or poem. My favorite gift ever from my husband is a poem he wrote for my birthday one year. Poetically speaking, it’s bad. But in terms of my intimacy with him, it’s beautiful and unforgettable. He stepped way out of his comfort zone to write something for me he knew I’d like. And if he wants to do something like that every decade or so, that would be just fine with me.

A day in bed. Yes, an entire day that we spend in bed together. We could hole ourselves up in our bedroom and do everything from the cushy, cozy spot of our mattress: Watch TV or movies, eat snacks and meals, read books, have conversations, take an afternoon nap, and — oh yeah — get physically intimate. Maybe more than once.

Are any of these are your wish list? What other ideas would you love for your spouse to gift you with this Valentine’s Day?

And here are some other ideas from previous posts:

What to Get Your Husband for V-Day
13 Sexy Valentine’s Gifts from Your Grocery Store
7 Sexy Valentine’s Gifts You Can Make
“Go Big” Valentine’s Gifts for Your Spouse
8 Cool Valentine’s Gifts for Your Hot Hubby
8 Sweet Valentine’s Gifts for Your Spicy Wife
Valentine’s Day for the Rest of Us

The post What I Really Want for Valentine’s Day (Maybe You Do Too) appeared first on Hot, Holy & Humorous.

1. Romantic Tea or Java. Romantic tea? Have I gone nutters? Nope. While shopping for tea flavors, I found a lovely line of Valentine’s themed teas from Adagio.

Most women I know are fans of tea, but if your wife is a coffee lover, how about something special in that department? Godiva Chocolatier makes a chocolate truffle coffee. If she’s a Keurig user, maybe you could pamper her with a bit of Raspberry Chocolate Truffle Coffee.

2. A Vase and a Vow. You could get your wife flowers for Valentine’s Day, and maybe that’s what she’d like. But if she really loves getting flowers, how about giving her a new vase with a note vowing you’ll bring home flowers one day each month for the rest of the year? She can look forward to seeing what kind of flowers you bring home, anticipating which day you surprise her with them, and then enjoying the bloom and fragrance of a fresh bouquet.

3. Necklace with Personal Charm. There is a necklace charm for everything. I don’t think that’s an exaggeration, after touring James Avery, craft fairs, and Etsy.com. Whatever interest, hobby, career, personality, etc. your wife has, there is a jewelry charm for that.

You could also go a purely romantic route. Like a heart or key-to-my-heart charm. Or perhaps write a personal note and give her a love letter necklace, like this one I found on Etsy:

4. Wine Bottle Labels. Wine has become a more popular beverage in recent years, and plenty of wives enjoy a glass of wine. If that’s your thing, how about some personalized wine bottle labels — for those bottles you can share on a romantic evening?

Using Song of Songs 1:1 (“Your love is more delightful than wine“), I created a sample wine label you can use.  Edit it to your taste, or simply replace “Husband” with your name and “Wife” with hers. (Click File, Make a Copy, and you’ll get a document you can edit). The labels are best printed on 4 3/4″ X 3 1/2″ labels (Avery 22826). Get a bottle of wine, slap it on, and you’re done! (Save the extra labels for later.) How easy is that?!

By the way, if you’re not into wine, these labels can be placed on other bottles, like your wife’s iced tea or Frappuccino (pictured above!)

5. Sensual Atmosphere for Your Bedroom. Yep, whether you understand it or not, many wives have a hard time getting in the mood when their bedroom looks like a tornado blew through and left laundry, kids’ toys, and/or clutter. Sure, I encourage wives to ignore it or clean it up and then make sex a priority, but you could gift her a beautiful invitation to be intimate by creating a sensual atmosphere to welcome your wife.

What that entails depends on your budget, her preferences, your savvy, etc. But creating the mood could include anything from cleaning up the room, to getting new silky sheets and/or his/her pillowcases, to candles or colored light bulbs, to an intimacy music playlist, to massage oils and lotions. And hey, if you can fold a towel swan, knock yourself out.

Just make your bedroom like a gentle invitation to your wife to relax, be pampered, and enjoy your intimate time together.

6. Clothing Reminder of Her Beauty. I’ve personally declared 2015 the year we wives learn to feel beautiful! Honestly, I don’t know a single woman who hasn’t experienced body image issues. But what I continually hear from husbands is that y’all think we’re beautiful anyway!

Guess what? We’d love for you to keep telling us (at least most of us would). While she’s working on feeling more confident, believing what you say, and taking care of her body, your wife might like a reminder of how you feel about her beauty. Several Christian clothing shops sell clothing and other items that make this point. Like this lovely T-shirt

7. Bucket List Pail. That’s right: Give your wife a metal pail. But be sure to write on the outside something like “Our Bucket List,” then spend an evening writing down things you both want to do in the course of your marriage, and drop them in the bucket. Keep adding to it as you think of more stuff.

Of course, you know what comes next, hubbies! You must start doing those activities in your bucket. But this gift will open up conversation, encourage you to look toward a positive future, and share some dreams.

On the practical side, you can find buckets at your local hardware store, hobby stores, and even discount stores. If you want something easy, grab one with a chalkboard label or slap chalkboard paint on it. Then write your title with chalk: “Our Bucket List.” “Our Twosome To-Dos.” “Life and Love List.” Or simply your names: “Mike & Lily’s Bucket List.” Make sure you have paper and pen to write your dreams and desires.

8. The Gift of Nothing. Now, before you think you’re off the hook because I used the word nothing, I’m NOT saying you shouldn’t get her something. I’m saying you should give her The Gift of Nothing — meaning that she gets to do nothing. You honor her with a day or night or weekend during which she is obligation-free. No meals to cook, no children to watch, no laundry to wash, no groceries to buy, no work to complete, no alarm clocks to answer, no ________[fill in the blank].

Many Most wives feel an ongoing burden of responsibilities, whether externally expected or internally felt, and having a break from that weight can be incredibly wonderful. Imagine this, guys: It’s like your wife finally getting to go to that mental “nothing box” the male species has as a retreat option. Like it or not, most of us gals just can’t mentally go there, unless the exterior demands are removed.

So line up the childcare, take care of the household, sweep her away somewhere if you need to, and let her do absolutely nothing for a while.  (And while there are no guarantees, so don’t add any demands to this gift for her, some men who have done this have found that something happens after the nothing. )

That’s all I’ve got. But make sure you consider who your wife is. For instance, my husband rarely brings me flowers, because I’m just not that into getting flowers. But if I’d be all over that bucket list idea! So think of what your wife needs, values, and desires and shop with your lovely woman in mind.

“He who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favor from the Lord.”

Proverbs 18:22

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