Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, that bane of dateless people everywhere. But did you know this fuzzy, romantic holiday has beginnings steeped in paganism and violence?
It all started with those hedonistic Romans. There they were minding their own business and celebrating the mid-February pagan fertility festival of Lupercalia. Sources vary on which god this ritual honored: Faunus, Romulus or Elvisus.
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| The goat skin slappers of Lupercalia |
The festival—a young man’s rite of passage—consisted of male youths running through town slapping others with pieces of goat skin to rid them of bad luck and infertility. I kid you not. This general rowdiness was followed by a lottery in which all the town’s willing young women put their names into an urn. Each man selected a name and the respective woman became his pleasure companion for the upcoming year. An updated version of this can be studied today via television’s The Bachelor.
The Romans seemed quite happy and sexually satisfied with this process so, of course, the Catholic Church had to find a way to squelch it. In 496 A.D. Pope Gelasius (who was a bit of a Vegas man himself) outlawed the Lupercalia festival but retained the lottery aspect of the ritual. Only now instead of women’s names in the urn, there would be names of saints. Both men and women would draw a name and, for the next year, they would be expected to imitate the life of the selected saint.
Well ain’t that the Catholic Church for you — getting as far removed from an original meaning as possible. While many Romans followed this new law, most were unsatisfied and left to form a nudist colony in the French Riviera.
The Church chose St. Valentine to replace the pagan fertility god and represent the “romantic” aspect of the new ritual.
Now who was St. Valentine? Well, Val was a bishop who lived around the 3rd century A.D., right when the Emperor Claudius II (of the popular PBS series I, Claudius) issued an edict forbidding marriage because he believed married men made poor soldiers. Today we know that married men actually make poor housemaids.
Val, who had voted for the more liberal Nader, disagreed with the Emperor’s views, and he continued to perform marriages in secret. It wasn’t long before Claudius discovered this and threw him into prison. Apparently, this was before the vow of chastity was set in stone because Val fell in love with his jailer’s daughter and wrote her love letters, the final one signed “from your Valentine.” A sweet note of affection, yes, but probably not very consoling for her in dealing with Val’s subsequent beheading.
Despite such early beginnings, Valentine’s Day did not become widely celebrated until 17th century Great Britain. It was those reserved Brits who popularized the valentine greeting card as a safe way to express one’s true feelings.
Today, thankfully, one doesn’t have to be imprisoned in order to exchange meaningful valentines. One only has to head to the nearest mall to load up on some frivolous and totally irrelevant gifts. However, if one does forget about this special day, it could indeed result in a beheading.
Food for Thought:
- True or False. Giving your loved one a Valentine gift from Frederick’s of Hollywood honors the essence of the pagan Lupercalia festival.
- If you consistently received more than ten valentines each year in school, you were probably:
- a good friend
- very popular
- the butt of a good joke
- a slut
- As demonstrated in this story, the Catholic Church has a long history of suppressing sexuality and personal freedom. However, Catholicism has continued to rank as one of the top three world religions. Explain.
- In Christian custom, one usually has to be a martyr to be named a saint. Does sacrificing your own needs in order to cater to your partner’s count?
- And, finally, do you think Pope Gelasius wore boxers or briefs?
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