[Abridged] History: Valentine’s Day

[Abridged] History: Valentine’s Day

Or How I Learned to Love The Urn

By David Ryan Palmer

Associate Editor

Love.  There’s nothing like it.  It is the glue that binds marriages, engagements, and the plot of Game of Thrones together.  That, and alcohol.  And swordplay.  No holiday is more romantic than February 14, Valentine’s Day.

Across McNeese’s campus, cards both cheaply bought at Walgreens and less cheaply bought at Books-a-Million or Hallmark will shower down upon those who are beloved.  Flowers will arrive in order to trigger a loved one’s allergies.  At least one person will choke on those little chalky candy hearts.  People without a Valentine will watch the person choke, and enjoy their suffering. 

This all being in observance of the day that a man was probably beaten to death with sticks, or crushed with stones, or run through with a gladius, a kind of Roman short sword.  The origins of Valentine’s Day, and of St. Valentine himself, are of course shrouded in mystery.  According to “The History of Valentine’s Day” at history.com, the Catholic Church has accounts of three saints with a name of Valentine or Valentinus that were martyred during the reign of Roman Emperor Claudius II.

Each has a tale of woe interwoven with faith and romance, which medieval types ate up with a spoon they probably whittled themselves, particularly in France and England.

There is, however, another possibility, one rooted deep in the Catholic Church’s often savvy use of native festivals to engender Christian worship.  The holiday of Lupercalia was a Roman festival honoring the fertility god Faunus, as well as those two rascal brothers Romulus and Remus.  Romulus would go on to star as a planet in some episodes of Star Trek, but this is where he got his start, as one of the famed founders of Rome.

According to “The History of Valentine’s Day,” Lupercalia would start with priests sacrificing a dog and a goat at the mouth of the cave where Romulus and Remus were thought to have been cared for as infants.  Nothing says romance like blood sacrifices and goat’s milk outside mom’s old cave. So the priests would skin the goats, dip the hides in the blood, and walk around the streets of Rome, slapping women with the now stylish, red goat-hide.  Thus began the custom of wearing blood-red, soiled animal skins in order to catch a man, a practice that has survived in certain parts of Lake Charles to this very day.

Later, the women of Rome would put their names into an urn.  Men would then come by and choose a name, and as legend has it, the couple would be paired up for a year.  Just like match.com, only without the crippling social embarrassment or lack of real, serious standards.

In either case, be thankful that you and your beloved are living in modern times, with modern amenities, and the ability to spend the absolute minimum of effort on your loved one.  In Roman times, you might have been martyred!  Or hit with bloody leather. 

Unless that’s your thing.  No judgements, here. (Except to online dating)