Valentine's Day is once again upon us, my friends. Whether you think it's the best or the worst, I think it's safe to say Valentine's Day is one of the strangest holidays we observe. Let's start by figuring out where it comes from.
There are a lot of Valentine's Day origin stories. A minimum of three Catholic saints are named Valentine or Valentinus, and all of them were martyrs. One legend has it that Valentine was killed for helping Christians get out of violent Roman prisons. Another goes that Valentine was one such prisoner who fell in love with his jailor's daughter and wrote her dreamy letters. One of the most popular myths says that Valentine was a third-century Roman priest, and Emperor Claudius II decided to outlaw marriage for young men on the basis that single guys made better soldiers. Valentine was having none of that and continued performing marriages for young lovebirds regardless. So, naturally, off with his head.
Now that we're even more confused regarding the holiday's namesake, let's talk about the traditions for a bit. Some people believe Valentine's Day takes place in the middle of February because that's when Valentine's death or burial was, circa 270 A.D. Others suppose it's an attempt by Christians to take over the pagan celebration of Lupercalia. What's Lupercalia, you say? Allow me to enlighten you.
Lupercalia was a fertility festival in honor of Faunus, who was the Roman god of agriculture. It was also a shout out to Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome. A bunch of Luperci, a sect of Roman priests, would sacrifice a goat, cut its hide into strips, dip it in the blood of sacrificial infants, and walk around town slapping women and crops with the bloody goat hide. According to legend, the women loved this because it meant they would be more fertile in the year to come. The festival often ended in a mass of marriages because, well, you know — everybody was all fired up and ready to go.
At the end of the 5th century, Lupercalia was outlawed by the Pope because he, and others, found it frankly creepy. In the Dark Ages, many in Europe believed February 14th to be the beginning of mating season for birds. It's around this time, the 15th century, that we start seeing a spike of love letters and such dated in February. From there it snowballed into what we've got today: a commercial holiday on which single people pretend to be happy and not single people pretend to be happier.
So here are a few tips for how to make Valentine's Day cool this year:
1. Break some convicts out of brutal Roman prisons
2. Write love letters to the dashing daughter or suave son of your jailor.
3. Perform marriage ceremonies for star-crossed lovers.
4. Slap people with a blood-soaked goat hide.
5. Or you could spend a day focusing on the people you love — whether it be bae, your mom, your brother, your friends, or even your pet aye-aye. We spend enough time thinking of ourselves, so it could be neat to take advantage of just one more day in the year where we can consciously remove ourselves from our own microcosms and do something nice for somebody else. Give some cookies to your neighbors. Buy a stranger's groceries. Call your grandpa. Shoot a heart emoji to your friends.
The illustrious will.i.am once asked us, "Where Is the Love?" Send our pal an answer by doing something for somebody else, and let him know it's right here.
