Lupercalia by betterPtopaganda
I ran across some interesting pieces about the origin of
this holiday. I thought I’d share this
from an NPR article from 2011.
Valentines Day, like so many holidays we celebrate, began as
a pagan feast, this particular holiday the Roman feast of Lupercalia. This celebration was held between the
thirteenth and fifteenth of February every year.
The Roman men, drunk and naked, would kill a goat or dog and
then whip the women with the hides thinking this would increase fertility. Believe it or not, the women would line up to
be whipped by the men. Hmmm…maybe this
was a highlight back in the day. I
imagine regular life was mundane and villagers looked forward to all the
festivals.
This feast also included a lottery where young men would
draw women’s names out of a jar. The
couples would be matched up for the duration of the festival, or longer if it
was a good match.
Later on, in the third century, and in two different years,
Emperor Claudius II executed two men on February fourteenth, both named Valentine. I’m not sure what these men did to lead to
this kind of punishment, but the Catholic Church honored these martyrs by
celebrating St. Valentine’s Day.
In the fifth century, things were changed again when Pope Gelasius
I combined Valentine’s Day with Lupercalia in order to abolish the pagan
celebration. The festival remained a
drunken revelry, only now the Christians wore clothes. It was still a day of fertility and love.
The holiday grew sweeter as the years went by with writers
romancing it in their work. In the
middle ages the first Valentine’s Day cards appeared. Cards were handmade until the tradition made
its way to the New World where factory-made
cards were generated in the nineteenth century.
Today this holiday, like most of them we celebrate, is big
business with all sorts of things appearing in the stores way before the actual
holiday. In 2012 more than $18 billion
was spent on Valentine’s Day purchases.
Today we buy jewelry, flowers, chocolates, stuffed animals and other
trinkets for our beloved on this day of love.
Even single people buy themselves gifts.
It makes one wonder if anyone still celebrates as the old
Romans did.
What are you doing for Valentine’s Day? Is it a holiday you celebrate?
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