Editor’s note: Likely most of you know this, but just in case ~ one of the reason’s I do not celebrate this holiday ~ at least in the traditional sense. The history around this day was a day of sacrifice ~ animals, people. There is no way to clean up this crap. Let’s scrap it and all holiday’s and create fresh – our own – based on Divine Purity and freedom and celebration.
Sadly, it was no surprise to me to learn today we had a school shooting here in the states… leaving the people to scream nasty thoughts about the NRA and gun violence and gun control while missing out on much of the details of this horror. No more.
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Historians aren’t 100% sure about the origins of Valentine’s Day, but many believe it all started as the pre-Roman empire ritual known as Lupercalia, which sounded like a real hoot. Every February 13 – 15, goats and dogs were sacrificed at an altar by the Luperci (or “brothers of the wolf”) as an offering. After that, folks were anointed in the blood of the animals, wiped clean with some wool soaked in milk (as one does), and feasted until they were full and drunk. Then came the best part: the Luperci took the skins of the sacrificial animals and ran around naked, smacking people with them. Here’s how Plutarch describes the festivities:
…many of the noble youths and of the magistrates run up and down through the city naked, for sport and laughter striking those they meet with shaggy thongs. And many women of rank also purposely get in their way, and like children at school present their hands to be struck, believing that the pregnant will thus be helped in delivery, and the barren to pregnancy.
Noel Lenski, a historian at the University of Colorado at Boulder, also points out that there was a kind of “matchmaking lottery” during the festival. Men drew women’s names randomly from a jar and then they would be, uh, “coupled” during the duration of the festival. Now that is a holiday.
Then, ladies and gentleman—drum roll please—came the Catholic Church. They didn’t care much for the blood, and the nakedness, and the sacrificing of the things. By the 5th century, Pope Gelasius I decided to create a new holiday right on top of the old pagan one to, well, make people forget about it. He said, and I quote, “Stop smackin’ bitches with dead animals,” and dubbed it St. Valentine’s day in honor of two Christian martyrs named Valentine—Valentine of Rome and Valentine of Terni—who both happened to be executed by the Roman Emperor Claudius Gothicus II on February 14 in two different years during the 3rd century A.D. What are the odds? Actually, pretty good, since the Romans were basically executing everybody who was Christian during that time. Anyway, at that point, celebrating Lupercalia was all but outlawed.
Continue reading here (if you can stomach it).
